The imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968

THE IMAGINATION OF THE NEW LEFT A GLOBALANALYSIS OF1968 BY GEORGE KATSIAFICAS SOUTH END PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHU...

Author: George N. Katsiaficas

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THE IMAGINATION

OF THE NEW LEFT A GLOBALANALYSIS

OF1968

BY

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS

SOUTH END PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

copyright G 1987 by George Katsiaficas Cover design by Cynthia Peters Produced by South End Press Printed in the USA Photo credits: p. 63: Alan Copeland (ed.), People's Park (Ballantine Books, 1969), p. 70; p. 102 and cover: Les inidit de Mai 68 (May 1978), p. 99 (from Agence Associated Press, May 22, 1968, Gare de Lyon; p. 121: J. Gregory Payne, Mayday: Kent State (Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1981 ), p. 17; p. 149: Rtm~pllTts (April, 1970). An earlier version of parts of this book appeared in Monthly Review as: "The Meaning of May '68" (May 1978) and "The Extraparliamentary Left in Europe" (September 1982). The author is grateful to the editors of Monthly Review for their permission to use these pages. Copyrights are still required for book production in the United States. However, in our case it is a disliked necessity. Thus, any properly footnoted quotation of up to 500 sequential words may be used without permission, so long as the total number of words quoted does not exceed 2,000. For longer quotations or for a greater number of total words, authors should write for permission to South End Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Katsiaficas, George N ., 1949The imagination of the New Left. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Government, Resistance to--History--20th century. 2. Right and left (Political science)--History--20th century. 3. Dissenters--History-20th century. I. Title. JC328.3.K38 1987 322.4 87-23343 ISBN 0-896-8-228-8 ISBN 0-89608-227-X (pbk.) ISBN-13: 978-0-89608-227-4

South End Press 7 Brookline Street, #1 Cambridge, MA 02139-4146

for Herben Marcuse, teacher and friend

TABLE OF CONTENTS Photographs, Charts, Maps, and Tables Preface

XI XIll

Part 1: A Global Analysis of 1968 Chapter 1: The New Left as a World-Historical Movement World-Historical Movements 1848, 1905, 1968: An Historical Overview The New Left: A Global Definition Chapter 2: Social Movements of 1968 The Significance of the T et Offensive Che's Foco Theory The Student Movement of 1968 Mexico and Latin America West Germany Italy ~~

Pakistan England Japan New Left vs. Old Left Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia Poland China The Theology of Liberation Revolt and Counterrevolution in the United States

3 6 13

17 29 29 36 37

47 49

53

H 55 56 56 58 59 64 66 70

71 73

Part II: New Left General Strikes Chapter 3: The New Left in France: May 1968

87

Global Connections Roots of the May Events The Workers The New Working Class Capitalist Relations of Production The Cultural Poverty of Consumer Society The Political Meaning of May 1968: Internationalism and Self-Management Patriotism and Internationalism Authoritarianism and Self-Management The Limits of Spontaneity Some Implications of May

89 91 94 95 97 98 102 I 04 105 I 08 110

Chapter 4: The New Left in the United States: May 1970

117

The Black Panther Party at Yale University The Campuses Erupt The Form of the Strike The Crisis as a Whole Minorities and the Anti-War Movement Workers and the Strike The Revolt Within the Military The Cultural Dimensions of the Crisis The Political Crisis From Watergate to the Iran-Contra Scandal Effects of the New Left Political Reform Reforms on the Campuses and in the Workplaces The End of Pu Amnictmll

118 119 12 7 130 132 134 139 142 150 153 158 159 161 164

Part III: Interpreting the New Left Chapter 5: The Political Legacy of the New Left Rebellion and Revolution Co-optation by the Two-Party System Professionalization of the Movement The Disarmament Movement and the Campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment Culture and Politics The Question of Revolutionary Subject Political Organization of the Avante Garde Socialism or Barbarism? An International Question

177 179 186 188 189 193 198 204 212

Chapter 6: The Rationality, of the New Left Nature and History The Unity of Scientism and Humanism The Sociology of Social Movements Current Research on Social Movements Fact and Value The Limits to Systems Analysis Critique of Soviet Marxism Philosophical Foundations The Ideology of Althusser's Marxism Appendix: Documents 1. Governor Ronald Reagan's Speech during "Operation Cablesplicer" (February 10, 1969) 2. Gram Metric Cable Splicer 3. Revolutionary Peoples' Constitutional Convention (September 1970)

219 224 226 231 238 241 244 249 250 254

259 259 263

265

Notes

281

Bibliographical Endnote

307

Index

309

PHOTOGRAPHS, CHARTS, MAPS, AND TABLES Chart 1: The Development of World-Historical Social Movements

18

Map 1: Major Student Disruptions, 1968-1969

38-39

Table 1: Incidents of Student Protest as Reported in Le Mrmde

44-45

Photo 1: Berkeley: People's Park, 1969

63

Photo 2: Paris: May 1968, Love at the Barricades

103

Photo 3: Kent State University: May 1970

121

Map 2: Guerrilla Attacks in the U.S., 1965-1970

145

Photo 4:

Rt~mtmts,

April 1970, Sexism and Depoliticization

149

Table 2: International Incidents of Political Violence Classified as "Terrorism," 1971-1985

182

Map 3: Devolving Europe: Nations Emerging from States

184

PREFACE Unlike any year of the half century preceding it, 1968 will be remembered for the worldwide eruption of new social movements, ones which profoundly changed the world without seizing political power. From Paris to Chicago, and Prague to Mexico City, unexpectedly popular struggles erupted in a global challenge to the established order. What were these movements for? Where have they gone? What have been their effects? To answer these questions is the purpose of this book. The literature on theN ew Left is already so vast that it would fill several libraries, yet there have been few attempts to answer the question: "What did the New Left want?" In part, the reactive nature of the movement-its appearance as the Great Refusal-accounts for this void. Indeed, what the movement aspired to create was scarcely known among many of its participants. Is it even possi.ble to speak of a common vision? I selected the general strike of May 1968 in France and the student strike of 1970 in the United States as the focus for this book because the actions of millions of people during these situations concretely demonstrated the New Left's vision of a qualitatively different society. By studying the spontaneously generated forms of dual power and the aspirations of millions of people during these periods of crisis, it became possible to discern the goals of the popular movement. In addition, the response of the established system to these crises reveals the powerful impact the New Left had on society, an impact obscured by the movement's decline amid apparent failure. In these case studies, I emphasize the form and content of emergent forces during periods of social upheaval. Although there were many leaders, my analysis is focused on the praxis of social llctors, millions of people who together generate a new dimension to reality by becoming a "class-for-itself." By focusing on these two general strikes, I hope to make dear the imagination of the New Left. xiii

To deal with the May 1968 near-revolution in France involved reading dozens of analyses both in French and English, but when I turned to the May 1970 student strike in the United States, I could not find one book which analyzed these events as a whole. The student strike has been a neglected moment in an otherwise heavily studied social movement, and my chapter on May 1970 presents for the first time a comprehensive view of this history. For the most part, activists from the pre-1966 period of the movement have been its historians in the United States, and their writing of history has been an empirical endeavor based on their own experiences and perceptions. Furthermore, the post-1966 period of the New Left, when the movement spread to working-class students and inner-city ghettos, was one in which activists adopted "revolutionary" political ideas (in contrast to the reformism of the previous phase). The resulting situation is such that a great deal has been published on the experiences of the pre-1966 period of the movement and the ideology of the post-1966 period, leaving the events of 1968 to 1970 largely unrecorded, or at best, superficially analyzed. The first part of this book provides a global analysis of the New Left because the international character of the movement was an essential dimension of its emergence and decline. More importantly, the various movements of 1968 developed a unified global focus for action, and their visions were international ones. Because these "new social movements" have generally been analyzed separately (in national, racial, gender, and organizational forms), the important dimension of their interconnectedness has been neglected. By introducing the notion of the "eros effect," I seek to universalize our understanding of the subjectivity of these movements within the framework of objective forces at work in the world system. There exists a wealth of"data" about the New Left, and I was fortunate to be granted access to a diverse set of archives. These included the special collection of the Herbert Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the files of the Zentralinstitut fur Sozial Wissenschaftliche Forschung in West Berlin, the archive at the Otto-Suhr lnstitut of the Free University of Berlin, and the personal archives of activists in France, West Germany, and the United States. The staff of the Central Library at the University of California, San Diego (where I completed an earlier draft of this book as my doctoral dissertation) procured materials from as far away as the library of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A Fulbright Grant made it possible for me to complete the research in Germany, and I conducted a number of interviews in France, West Germany, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Hungary, East Germany, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Peter Bohmer's comments have made this book appreciably better than it would have been. For their support during the years I have been working on this project, I wish to thank Carol Becker, James and Grace Boggs, Alan Cleeton, Jules and Martinne Chancel, Stew Alben, Judy Clavir-Alben, Aida Blanco and Rick Maxwell, Bertha and L.S. Stavrianos, Rosie Lynn, Paul Sweezy, Billy Nessen, Rudy Torres, Bernd Rabehl, Chrysoula, Nicholas, and Diane Katsiaficas, David Helvarg, Joseph Gusfield, and Doreen and Andre Gorz. I owe special and often unspoken gratitude to Dalal, Cassandra, and XIV

Katherine Hanna. Cynthia Peters has been a tremendous help in navigating the manuscript through the editorial process. As a researcher, I seek to make apparent dimensions of the New Left which have yet to be thematized, and as a participant in the movement, I have these same concerns close to my heart, a coincidence of interest which has been a key reason for my ability to complete the formidable project l began in 1917. Without the encouragement of Herbert Marcuse and the confidence with which he showered me, I would no doubt have abandoned this project. To him, I dedicate this book. July 1987

Part I

A GLOBALANALYSIS OF1968

Chapter 1

THE NEW LEFT

As A WORLDHISTORICAL MOVEMENT The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite-Matter. As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom. -G.W.F. Hegel The worldwide episodes of revolt in 1968 have generally been analyzed from within their own national context,. but it is in reference to the global constellation of forces and to each other that these movements can be understood in theory as they occurred in practice. Particularly since World War II, it is increasingly difficultto analyze social movements from within the confines of a nation-state. The events which catalyze social movements today are often international ones. The 1970 nationwide student strike in the United States, for example, is remembered mainly because of the killings at Kent State and jackson State Universities, but it was enacted in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia as well as the repression of the Black Panther Pany at home. The international connections between social movements in 1968 were often synchronic as television, radio, and newspapers relayed news of events throughout the world. In May 1968, for example, when a student revolt led to a general strike of nearly ten million workers in France, there were significant demonstrations of solidarity in Mexico City, Berlin, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Berkeley, and Belgrade, and students and workers in both Spain and Uruguay attempted general strikes of their own. Massive student strikes in Italy forced Prime Minister Aldo Mora and his cabinet to resign; Germany experienced its worst political crisis since World War II; and a student strike atthe University of Dakar, Senegal, led to a general strike of workers. These are instances of what sociologists have called "contagion effects" (and what I consider "eros effects"); they remain to this day understudied, a moment of neglect which stands in inverse proponion to their significance. 3

4

IMAGINATION OF THE NEW LEFT

It was not by chance alone that the Tet offensive in Vietnam occurred in the same year as the Prague Spring, the May events in France, the student rebellion in West Germany, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the takeover of Columbia University, riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the pre-Olympic massacre in Mexico City. These events were related to one another, and a synchronic analysis of the global movement of 1968 validates Hegel's proposition that world history moves from east to west. The global oppositional forces converged in a pattern of mutual amplification: "The whole world was watching," and with each act of the unfolding drama, whole new strata of social actors entered the arena of history, until finally a global contest was created. Although there was a self-described "New Left" in France as early as 1957, and in 1971, there was a "New Left" insurrection in Sri Lanka, a climactic point was reached in the life of the New Left, a period of intense struggle between global uprisings and global reaction, a pivot around which protests appeared to lose momentum as "repressive tolerance" shed its tolerant appearance. This critical conjuncture in the world constellation of forces occurred in I 968, a year of world-historical importance. As one observer put it: History does not usually suit the convenience of people who like to divide it into neat periods, but there are times when it seems to have pity on them. The year 1968 almost looks as though it had been designed to serve as some sort of signpost. There is hardly any region of the world in which it is not marked by spectacular and dramatic events which were to have profound repercussions on the history of the country in which they occurred and, as often as not, globally. This is true of the developed and industrialized capitalist countries, of the socialist world, and of the so-called "third world"; of both the eastern and western, the northern and southern hemispheres.• Prior to 1968, no one knew and few could have guessed what was in store for world history. Without warning, worldwide movements spontaneously erupted. At the beginning of the year, de Gaulle hailed F ranee as an "infallible beacon for the world," but if he had known what kind of beacon F ranee would be in 1968, he might never have delivered his New Year's Address. By the end of the year, President Lyndon Johnson summed it up in his Thanksgiving Proclamation: "Americans, looking back on 1968, may be more inclined to ask God's mercy and guidance than to offer him thanks for his blessings." 2 Without warning, the global turmoil of 1968 erupted and became directed against both capitalism and real-world socialism, against both authoritarian power and patriarchal authority. Despite its apparent failure, the New Left regenerated the dormant traditions of self-government and international solidarity in Europe and the United States, and temporarily or not, the question of revolution was once again on the historical agenda. At the same time, the meaning of revolution was enlarged to include questions of power in everyday life as well as

The New Left u a World-Historical Movement

s

questions of power won by past revolutions, and the goal of revolution came to be the decentralization and self-management of power and resources. If the idea of revolution in an industrialized society was inconceivable for three decades prior to the New Left, the kind of revolution prefigured in the emergent praxis of the movement was unlike ones of the century before it. By posing the historical possibility of a communalism based upon enlarged social autonomy and greater individual freedom (not their suppression), a new world society based on the international decentralization of political and economic institutions (not their national centralization), and a way of life based on a new harmony with Nature (not irs accelerating exploitation), the New Left defined a unique stage in the aspirations of revolutionary movements. A new set of values was born in the movement's international and interracial solidarity, in its rejection of middle-class values like the accumulation of wealth and power, in its fight against stupefying routines and ingrained patterns of patriarchal domination, and in its attempt to reconstruct everyday life, not according to tradition or scientific rationality, but through a liberated sensibility. In crisis situations such as those of May 1968 in Franee and, to some extent, May 1970 in the United States, these values were momentarily realized in spontaneously generated forms of dual power. Less than two decades since the New Left reached its high point, however, it is difficult to find obvious traces of that movement, panicularly in the United States. The tempo of modern history has been so rapid that what was new twenty years ago seems to be as far away from the present as all the rest of history. Once we review some ofthe events of 1968, however, itshould become clear that, far from evaporating into the stratosphere in failure, the New Left was diluted by its very success. The French May events rejuvenated the Socialist Party and brought it to power in 1981, and the crisis created by the student strike of May 1970 led to Watergate and an end to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The civil rights acts and equal rights initiatives indicate a broad shift in the status of minorities and women while anti-racist and feminist values of the New Left have spread throughout society, permeating even the most densely constructed protective membranes. In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement helped to desegregate schools, lunch counters, and buses and won the right for blacks to vote in the South. In the 1980s, jesse jackson's campaign for the presidency won millions of votes in the nation's primary elections. In the 1960s, only a few people in the industrialized countries supponed the right of South African blacks to rule their country. Today, an end to apanheid is nearly universally desired. In historical time, or "world time," as Theda Skocpol has named it,J it is still too early to fully account for the New Left. If there is one fact which has been established by the New Left, however, it is the renewed idea of revolution in the industrialized countries. Prior to the New Left, there was a widespread belief that industrialized societies were harmonious social systems which, internally at least, contained no major oppositional forces. The "end of ideology" was proclaimed in one form or another by Daniel Bell, Raymond Aron, and Seymour Manin Lipset. Since the New Left, however, a key question for social research has been the legitimation crisis of the system.

6


In the aftermath of 1968, it is widely recognized that social crises can arise unexpectedly and overnight reach proportions so immense that none of the participants (willing and unwilling ones) can.be ce~tai~ of their outcome. F?r some, social crises are moments of madness 10 wh1ch It seems that the soc1al machine has broken down, that the driver's seat is empty, and that the passengers have become delirious. For others, these are moments when exhilarating new visions of life are created not by communication with God, not concocted through drugs, but developed here on earth in the midst of public life.• Though secular, such moments metaphorically resemble the religious transformation of the individual soul through the sacred baptism in the ocean of universal life and love. The integration of the sacred and the secular in such moments of"political eros" (a term used by Herbert Marcuse) is an indication of the true potentiality of the human species, the "real history" which remains repressed and distorted within the confines of "prehistoric" powers and taboos.

World-Historical Movements _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Periods of crisis and turmoil on a global scale are relatively rare in history. Since the French and American revolutions, it is possible to identify only a handful of such periods of global eruptions: 1848-49, 1905-07, 1917-19, and 196 7-70. In each of these periods, global upheavals were spontaneously generated. In a chain reaction of insurrections and revolts, new forms of power emerged in opposition to the established order, and new visions of the meaning of freedom were formulated in the actions of millions of people. Even when these movements were unsuccessful in seizing power, immense adjustments were necessitated both within and between nation-states, and the defeated movements offered revealing glimpses of the newly developed nature of society and the new kinds of class struggles which were to follow. Throughout history, fresh outbreaks of revolution have been known to "conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed lang~;~age."S The movements of 1968 were no exception: Activists self-consciously acted in the tradition of past revolutions. As one observer noted in discussing the general strike of May 1968 in F ranee: In the Paris of May 1968, innumerable commentators, writing to celebrate or to deplore, proffered a vast range of mutually exclusive explanations and predictions. But for all of them, the sensibility of May triggered off a remembrance of things past. By way of Raymond A ron, himself in touch with T ocqueville, readers of Le Figaro remembered February 1848; by way of Henri Lefebvre, French students remembered the Proclamation of the commune in March 1871, as did those who read Edgar Morin in Le Monde; French workers listened to elder militants who spoke of the occupation of factories in June 1936; and most adults, whether or

The New Leh as a World-Historical Movement

7

not they had been in the Resistance, relived August 1944, the liberation of Paris.6 The historical parallels of the May events were recognized in the written statements of the strikers when they called on the tradition of 1789, 1848, the Paris Commune, and the Russian soviets of 1905 and 1917 to define their movement. Such periods of the eros effect witness the basic assumptions and values of a social order (nationalism, hierarchy, and specialization) being challenged in theory and practice by new human standards. The capacity of millions of people to see beyond the social reality of their day-to imagine a better world and fight for it-demonstrates a human characteristic (the eros effect) which may be said to transcend time and space. The reality of Paris at the end of May 1968 conformed Jess to the categories of existence preceding May (whether the former political legitimacy of the government, management's control of the workplaces, or the isolation of the students from the "real world") than to the activated imaginations of the movement. Millions of people moved beyond a mere negation of the previous system by enacting new forms of social organization and new standards for the goal-determination of the whole system. Modes of thought, abolished in theory by empiricists and structuralists, emerged in a practical human effort to break out of antiquated categories of existence and establish non-fragmented modes of Being. Debate ceased as to whether human beings were capable of such universal notions as justice, Liberty, or Freedom. Rather, these abstractions, concretized in the actions of millions of people, became the popularly redefined reality. The May events, like the Commune and other moments of revolutionary upheaval, established however briefly a new type of social reality where living human energy and not things was predominant. From this perspective, the May events can be viewed as a taste of the joy of human life which will be permanently unleashed with the advent of a new world system qualitatively different than that in France or on either side of the "iron curtain." With the end of "pre-history" and the beginning of "human history," human imagination will be freed to take giant steps in constructing a better world. "All Power to the Imagination," written everywhere in May 1968, will become inscribed in the lives and institutions of future generations.' Historically speaking, it has often been the case that a particular nation has experienced social upheavals at the same time as order reigned elsewhere. Coups d'et11t, putsches, and armed takeovers of power within the confines of a particular nation have become so commonplace in the modern worldparticularly in the third world-that it is rare for a long period of time to pass without some change in national ruling elites. In the case of theN ew Left (and the movements of 1848 and 1905), there was no successful revolution or seizure of power despite the movement's global character, but the social convulsions of 1848, 1905, and 1968 were not contained within the boundaries of any particular country. The globalization of conflict in these periods and the massive proliferation of the movement's ideas and aspirations is a crucial aspect of their world-historical character.& World-historical movements emerge in a spontaneous chain reaction of uprisings, strikes,

8


rebellions, and revolutionary movements. Around the world, the movement's strategy and aspirations become generalized, emerging here, then there, building up gradually in confined spaces, then erupting on a global level. Some epochs of class struggle are world-historical and others are not, a distinction noted by Antonio Gramsci. He used the terms "organic" and "conjunctural" to describe this difference:

It is necessary to distinguish organic movements (relatively permanent) from movements which may be termed "conjunctural" (and which appear as occasional, immediate, almost accidental). Conjunctural phenomena too depend on organic movements to be sure, but they do not have any very far-reaching historical significance; they give rise to political criticism of a minor, day-today character, which has as its subject top political leaders and personalities with direct governmental responsibilities. Organic phenomena on the other hand, give rise to socio-historical criticism, whose subject is wider social groupings beyond the public figures and beyond the top leaders. When an historical period comes to be studied, the great importance of this distinction becomes clear.9 The apparent climax and disappearance of the New Left, particularly in the core of the world system, have led many observers to conclude that these movements conform to what Gramsci called conjunctural, arising as a unique product of the post-World War II baby boom, the injustice of Jim Crow, or the prolonged intensity of the war in Vietnam. It is one of the purposes of this book to demonstrate the organic nature of the New Left by portraying its global impact. World-historical movements define new epochs in the cultural, political, and economic dimensions of society. Even in failure, they present new ideas and values which become common sense as time passes. World-historical movements qualitatively reformulate the meaning of freedom for millions of human beings. The massive and unexpected strife and the international proliferation of new aspirations signal the beginning of a new historical epoch. During the dramatic outbreak of revolts and the reaction to them, new aspirations are passionately articulated and attacked, and progress occurs in weeks and months when previously it took decades and half centuries. History does not unfold in a linear direction or at an even pace. As Marcuse observed, "There is no even progress in the world: The appearance of every new condition involves a leap; the birth of the new is the death of the old."ID He forgot to add that the birth of the new, after its period of celebration and youth, moves into maturity and then decays. In order to appreciate this, let us review what is meant by world history. Hegel measured the development of world history through the emergence of individualized inward subjectivity. 11 Such a transposition of the individual for the species as the agent and outcome of world history thoroughly conformed to the ideology of the ascendant bourgeoisie. 12 The limitations of Hegel's outlook are apparent in his conclusion that history culminates in Germanyll and in his legitimation of the Prussian state.

The New Left as a World-Historical Movement

9

In contrast to Hegel, it is my view that history is nothing but the development of the human species and is not measured through the flowering of the individual in isolation from others (that is, bourgeois history) but in the unfolding of human collectivities and of an individuality which surpasses bourgeois individualism. Moreover, what for Hegel was a dialectic of mind is analyzed here as a dialectic of praxis, of the consciousness-in-action of millions of people. The history of the modern world, from the struggle for national independence and' democracy to the liberation of oppressed classes and managed masses, follows a logic similar to that uncovered by Hegel, a dialectical framework within which the potentiality of the human species as a species-being unfolds. The logic of world history carries an irony which uturns everything upside down," not only posing the new against the old, but simultaneously transforming what was once new and revolutior,tary into its opposite. In the past two hundred years, we see this in the history of the United States. From challenging and defeating the forces of "divine right," the world's first secular democratic state has long since degenerated, yesterday bloodily invading Vietnam and today arming contT/lS in Central America while massively aiding one of the world's last states founded on a notion of "divine ~ight," a religious state whose technological weapons of genocide are provided by the United States to forestall the realization of its own ideal foundation: a secular, democratic state for people of all religions, but this time in Palestine. So much for what can become of these world-historical leaps when left adrift in the world of the "survival of the fittest." Let us return to their moments of joyful infancy, to the attempts made by human beings to leap beyond the dead weight of the past. In the modern world, the essential indication of these leaps, the signal for a whole epoch of class struggles, is the general strike. Such strikes are not cleverly orchestrated by a small group of conspirators or .. world-historical individuals," but involve the spontaneous and conscious action of millions of people. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out: Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches of industry and general strikes in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting-all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another-it is ceaselessly moving, a changing sea of phenomena ••• In a word, the mass strike ••• is not a crafty method discovered by subtle reasoning for the purpose of making the proletarian struggle more effective, but the method of motion of the prolet111ian mllSS, the phenomenal form of the proletarian struggle in the revolurion.l 4 General strikes not only sum up new historical epochs of class struggle by revealing in utmost clarity the nature of the antagonists, they also indicate the future direction of the movement-its aspirations and goals, which, in the heat of historical struggle, emerge as popular wishes and intuitions. George Sorel described the general strike as:


10

... the myth in which Socialism is wholly comprised· ... Strikes have engendered in the proletariat the noblest, deepes~, and most moving sentiments that they possess; the ~en_eral strtke groups them all in a co-ordinated picture, and by brmgmg them together, gives to each one of them its m~ximum of ~nten~ity; appeal~ng to their painful memories of particular con~~cts, It colors With an intense life all the details of the composition presented to consciousness. We thus obtain that intuition of Socialism which language cannot give us with perfect clearness-and we obtain it as a whole, perceived instantaneously.l 5 General strikes create a new reality, negating previous institutions, rupturing the hegemony of the existing order, and releasing seemingly boundless social energies which normally remain suppressed, repressed, and channeled into more "proper" outlets. The liberation of the life instincts in these moments creates unique qualities of social life. In 1848, 1905, and I 968, for example, anti-anti-Semitism was a recurrent public theme, and international solidarity momentarily outweighed patriotic sentiments.l 6 In contrast to what has become a commonplace alienation from politics, these moments are ones of the eroticization of politics, as portrayed by the May 1968 slogan, "The more I make revolution, the more I enjoy love.."l 7 Drudgery becomes play as imagination replaces practicality, and human competition and callousness are replaced by cooperation and dignity. During the Paris Commune of 18 71, for example, the streets were safe for the first time in years, even with no police of any kind. As one Communard said, "We hear no longer of assassination, theft, and personal assault; it seems, indeed, as if the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its conservative friends."IS The essential change which creates these leaps in human reality is the activation of whole strata of previously passive spectators, the millions of people who decide to participate in the conscious re-creation of their economic and political institutions :tnd social life. Such spontaneous leaps may be, in part, a product of long-term social processes in which organized groups and conscious individuals prepare the groundwork, but when political struggle comes to involve millions of people, it is possible to glimpse a rare historical occurrence: the emergence of the eros effect, the massive awakening of the instinctual human need for justice and for freedom. When the eros effect occurs, it becomes clear that the fabric of the status quo has been torn, and the forms of social control have been ruptured. This rupture becomes clear when established patterns of interaction are negated, and new and better ones are created. In essence, general strikes (and revolutions) are the emergence of humans as a species-being, the negation of the age-old "survival of the fittest" through a process by which Nature becomes History (Aufhebung deT NatuTwikhsig-

keit).19 Periods of revolutionary crisis bear little resemblance to crises produced by economic breakdowns. The latter have their roots in the irrational organization of the economy and the state (NatuTwuchs), while general strikes and revolutions are essentially attempts to provide rational alternatives. A dialectical view of crisis includes both of these types, particularly since they


11

commonly have a close relationship to each other. Traditional usage of the concept of crisis, however, generally denotes only economic dislocations like the Great Depression. Economic crises are one type of social crisis and differ from crises produced by the ero1 effect. The global impact of revolutionary movements which have succeeded in seizing political power is widely recognized. Few observers would question the fact that the revolutions of 1776 in the United States, 1789 in France, and 1917 in Russia have had profound and long-lasting international repercussions. The ruptures of social order in 1848, 1905, and 1968 may not have toppled the dominant institutions, but even in "failure," they marked the emergence of new values, ideas, and aspirations which became consolidated as time passed. As I discuss below, these intense periods of class struggle were an important part of the self-formation of the human species. They were periods of action which dramatically changed the actors. As Rosa Luxemburg put it: The most precious, because lasting, thing in this rapid ebb and flow of the wave is its mental sediment: the intellecrual, cultural growth of the proletariat which proceeds by fits and starts, and which offers an inviolable guarantee of their further irresistible progress in the economic as in the political struggle.2o The new reality created by the eros effect is not limited to a higher rationality among an elite, but contains popular dimensions as well. Thomas Jefferson observed this phenomenon in his analysis of the global impact of the American revolution: As yet that light (of liberty) has dawned on the middling classes only of the men of Europe. The Kings and the rabble, of equal importance, have not yet received its beams, but it continues to spread, and ••• it can no more recede than the sun return on his course. A first attempt to recover the right of self-government may fail, so may a second, a third, etc. But as a younger and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever-renewed attempts will ultimately succeed.21 As Jefferson realized, the success (or failure) of a social movement in taking over political power is but one dimension of its impact. Even in failure, there remains a continuity in the needs and aspirations of millions of people, and the experiences accumulated from political praxis are a significant historical legacy. Whether in intuitive terms, directly intergenerational, or obtained from the study of history, human beings are changed by social movements, and the self-formation of the species remains the innermost meaning of history. If history teaches us anything, it reveals the process through which the human species becomes conscious of its own development, a consciousness which exists in concrete form during moments of the eros effect. In l'etrospect, we can observe today that 1848, 1905, and 1968 marked the first acts of the emergence of new social classes on the stage of world history. Despite defeat in their first experiences in the class struggle, these

IZ


"failed" movements had their moments of success-even if incomplete-in subsequent epochs. Within the context of the world system's escalating spiral of expansion, new social movements take up where previous ones leave off, an insight demonstrated below through an overview of the "failed" social movements of 1848, 1905, and 1968. This overview demonstrates the connections between the emergent subjectivity of millions of people over more than a century. Furthermore, the world-historical movements of the working class of 1848, the landless peasantry of 1905, and the new working class of 1968 provide a glimpse of the essential forces which have producedand are products of-the movement of history. Although each of these periods of upheaval revitalized social movements, differing economic conditions precipitated the storms. The revolutions of 1848 were preceded by the prolonged economic slump of 1825-48, and the movements of 1905 were also preceded by severe hardships following the worldwide slump of 1873-1896. 22 The two decades prior to 1968, however, were ones of immense global economic expansion. Although 1968 is usually seen as the beginning of the world economic downturn of the 1970s, the political and cultural storms preceded the economic slump. Despite their differing precipitating conditions and historical epochs, the movements of 1848, 1905, and 1968 exhibit striking similarities, and parallels can be made between their cultural contestation of rules governing everyday life. As initially pointed out by Alexis de T ocqueville, the first revolution against boredom was in 1848. He makes it quite clear that in the established political life, "there reigned nothing but languor, impotence, immobility, boredom" and that "the nation was bored listening to them."23 When he turned to the poet Lamartine, himself active then, Tocqueville concluded, "He is the only man, I believe, who always seemed to be ready to turn the world upside-down to divert himself." If 1848 was, at least partially, a revolution against boredom, the May events in France were even more so. As the Situationists put it: "We do not want to exchange a world in which it is possible to die of starvation for one in which it is possible to die from boredom." Shortly before May 1968, the front page of Le Monde ran the headline "France s'mnuie!" and Godard's film Weekend had expressed a similar message. In the United States, Abbie Hoffman's Revolution/or the Hell of It! sold out as quickly as it was printed. Leading up to the cataclysmic events of 1848 in Vienna, Jesuit priests were handed control of nearly all the high schools, and when they forbade the old and joyous custom of nude bathing in the river, the first sparks of student protest began to fly. From these small beginnings emerged the revolutionary student brigade that became the government in Vienna for months.241n 1968 at Nanterre University on the outskirts of Paris, a few men who had spent the night in the women's dormitory to protest sexual segregation and parietal hours were chased by police into a crowded lecture hall where scores of students were then mercilessly beaten. So began the escalating spiral of the May events. Berlin in 1848 had a reputation of being gay in every way. Berliners adored picnics, bonfires, parades, and festivals, but one of the many


13

prohibitions included a ban on workers' smoking in the public gardens, the Tiergarten. After the first round of barricade fighting in March, a crowd carried some of the 230 civilian dead to the palace, and someone called out loudly for the King to come and see the flower-covered corpses. His Majesty appeared on the balcony and took his hat off at the sight of the dead while the queen fainted. In this delicate moment, Prince Lichnowsky addressed the crowd, telling them their demands were granted. No one moved. Suddenly someone asked, "Smoking, too?" "Yes, smoking too." "Even in the Tiergarten?" "You may smoke in the Tiergarten, gentlemen." With that, the crowd dispersed. The fact that another Prussian, Prinz zu Hohenlohe Ingelfingen, questioned whether it was tobacco or some other concoction that workers were smoking, provides another aspect of cultural affinity between the movements of 1848 and 1968. Such parallels might be regarded as trivial ones, but their significance should not be disregarded unless one refuses to contemplate the need of the established order to control leisure time and the aspirations of popular movements to transform everyday life. Precisely because these movements were rooted in the popular need to transform power structures in everyday life are they "world-historical." The birth of the women's movement in 1848, its revival after 1905, and its reemergence in 1968 are further indications of the "organic" awakening in these years. In order to appreciate their place in the development of the modern world, an overview of the social movements which emerged in 1848, 1905, and 1968 is provided below.

1848, 1905, 1968: An Historical Overview_ _ _ __ These three world-historical movements emerged at different historical conjunctures, and they were comprised of differing social classes. Although many groups participated in the revolutions of 1848, these events marked the entrance of the working class on the stage of world history. On February 22-24, 1848, the workers of Paris rose up and toppled the monarchy, sending the King into exile and sparking a continent-wide movement for democratic rights, the end of the monarchies, and economic justice. In March, a bloody uprising in Vienna defeated the army and led to a new constitution. As the fighting spread to Berlin, Bavaria, Baden, and Saxony, the King of Prussia quickly formed a new government and promised a democratic constitution. In Sicily, the Bourbon dynasty was overthrown, and the revolt spread to Naples, Milan, Venice, and Piedmont. The Poles rose against their Prussian rulers, and two nights of bloody barricade fighting broke out in Prague. Altogether there were some fifty revolutions in Europe in 1848 (if one counts the small German and Italian States and Austrian provinces), and these movements converged in their demands for republics and in their tactic of building barricades for urban warfare. In June 1848, a new round of insurrections began when the working class of Paris seized control of the city, and in four days of bloody fighting from behind barricades, thousands of people were killed. After the revolt, the army held more than 15,000 prisoners, and many of them were later executed.

14


Despite their defeat, the workers of Paris catalyzed a new wave of armed insurrections in Berlin, Vienna, and Frankfurt, and vast ~ovements emerged among the peasantry. A revolutionary army appeared m Hungary, and the Pope fled Rome as the republica~ movement won control from the French If the Hungarian revolutionary army had been able to reach the army. · mtg · ht have conso I'd d insurgents in Vienna, a Europe-w•'de revo Iutton 1 ate . Instead counterrevolution reigned as order was brutally restored. The Holy Allianc~ (fashioned by Metternich ~nth~ wake of Napoleon) rna>: not have been shattered in 1848, but Mettermch h1mself was forced to flee V 1enna, an-d greater liberties were won within the confines of the existing state. Only after World War I would the Kaiser, the Czar, and the Hapsburgs be permanently dethroned, but after the storms of 1848, modem political parties, trade unions, and democratic rights emerged as bourgeois society was consolidated. The defeats of the insurrectionary governments of 1848 throughout Europe led to a period of stagnation for revolutionary movements, and in the next twenty-five years, free enterprise experienced its most dynamic years. For the first time, industrialization took root in France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia, and Germany quickly developed into a major industrial country. The United States was conquered by new economic masters whose program of industrialization necessitated freeing the slaves. During this period, there was another wave of the global expansion of European powers: the Syrian expedition (1860); the Anglo-French war against China; the French conquest of Indochina (1863 ); Maximilian's dispatch to Mexico; and the conquest of Algeria and Senegal. There were also wars between the capitalist powers, notably those in the Crimea and the Franco-Prussian war (which precipitated the Paris Commune). Global expansionism after 1848led to the accumulation of vast wealth in the industrialized nations, and the concomitant harnessing of science to production and new mass production techniques (that is, the Second Industrial Revolution) further intensified the system's tendency toward global expansion. The whole world became divided into oppressor and oppressed nations as "free trade" led to imperialist conquest. Nearly seventy ye2rs after the emergence of the working class as a class-for-itself, the peasants and natives of the periphery, increasingly denied land and liberty by the expanding imperial system, emerged as a force in their own right. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the global networks of communication and transportation which accompanied the expanding world system were limited compared to our standards today, but nonetheless, they helped create a synchronized world movement unlike anything of the past. Beginning with Cuba ( 1895) and the Philippines ( 189 7), uprisings and movements for national independence appeared throughout the world. From 1904 to 1907, significant social movements erupted in India, Indochina, Madagascar, Angola, Portuguese Guinea, Egypt, Crete, Albania, Serbia, Poland, Guatemala, and Peru. A protracted guerrilla war against German colonial rule in Namibia cost the lives of 100,000 Africans, and the Zulus in Natal rose against their British rulers. The defeat in 1905 of Russia, a great European power, by japan, a small


IS

Asian kingdom, helped precipitate this global wave of revolutionary activity. At one end of Asia, Sun Yat-sen declared, "We regarded the Russian defeat by Japan as the defeat of the West by the East." Similarly, Jawaharlal Nehru described how "Japanese victories stirred up my enthusiasm ••. Nationalistic ideas filled my mind. I mused oflndian freedom. "2S Atthe other end of Asia, a British diplomat in Constantinople reponed to London that the japanese victory made every fiber in Turkish political life tingle with excitement. Three years later, the Young Turk revolt led to an insurrection in Saloniki, and a constitutional government was quickly won for the entire Ottoman empire. In China, the 1911 nationalist revolurion led to the end of the Manchu dynasty and the emergence of modem Chinese political patties. As the entire world convulsed in social upheavals, the Americas witnessed the Mexican revnlntion and heard Marcus Garvey's call," Africa for the Africans!" In Asia, Korean insurgents rose against their japanese rulers. Popular movements erupted among miners and railroad workers in Germany, England, F ranee, and the United States, and among farm workers in Italy and Galicia. The praxis of the working-class movement from 1900 to 1905 was a demonstration of the historically new tactic of the general strike. In this period, there were general strikes in Russia, Bohemia, Spain, Sweden, and Italy, strikes which were modeled on the first general strike of 1877 in St. Louis, Missouri. Between 1900 and 1905, there were massive strikes by miners in Pennsylvania (1900), Colorado (1903-04), Austria (1900), and France ( 1902)i a general strike of all production workers in Barcelona ( 1902)i and strikes for universal voting rights in Sweden (1902), Belgium (1902), Prague ( 1905), Galicia ( 1905), and Austria ( 1905). Although no movement came to power, organizations of farm workers in Italy and Galicia were

strengthened; the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) were launched in the United Statesj and in Belgium, Austria, and Sweden, universal suffrage was enacted.26 In Persia, general strikes and the emergence of soviets (organs of dual power or 11njomtmS) precipitated a constitutional revolution which ultimately deposed the Qajar dynasty. In the course of these struggles, the Persian women's movement played an integral role. Organized into secret societies, masked women carried out armed actions while others published feminist newspapers and organized distussion groups. Although these actions achieved only minimal legal change in the status of women. there was a more significant transformation of the social attitude toward women, a change which established the cornerstone for future feminist movements thereP Further to the north in Russia, the mighty Czar was nearly overthrown by his own subjects, another event of particular importance in rhe global , movement. The massacre of hundreds of peaceful marchers in St. Petersburg on Bloody Sunday (in january 1905) precipitated a general strike coordinated by spontaneously formed soviets. Only after thousands of workers were killed in the course of months of strikes did the movement temporarily abate. The revolution of 1905 transformed Russian politics by illuminating the brutality of Czarist rule at the same time as it indicated the strength of the popular movement. As previously disenfranchised workers and humble

16


peasants found themselves rallying the country to their cause, the women of Russia became activated: There had been no specifically feminist movement in Russia before this time, but there were obvious feminist implications in the idea of universal suffrage. And they encouraged the faint beginnings of a movement that now began to pick up a following.l& Although the movement did not seize power, the Czar was forced to grant limited democratic reforms, the Duma (Russian Parliament) was created, and Russian workers won a shorter working day and the right to organize. The spontaneously generated movement of 1905 permanently changed the common sense of Russia, and over the next twelve years, there was a growing wave of strikes which culminated in the reappearance of the soviets and the overthrow of the Czar. Russia'sdefeat in World War I left a vacuum of power, and eight months later, the Bolsheviks seized power amidst an uprising they orchestrated. The Bolsheviks' success helped to catalyze council movements in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, movements of workers and peasants which led to the end of the Austrian and German empires, even though the insurgents were unable to remain in power. From the May 4 Movement in China to the massive strikes in the United States and Great Britain, the international repercussions of the Russian revolution were immediately felt. In the decades following 1917, the working class and its peasant allies were successful in a host of countries as the locus of revolutionary movements shifted away from Europe to the periphery of the world system. Within industrialized societies, over-production led to a worldwide depression beginning in 1929, and the working-class movement was temporarily revived in the Popular Front government in France, the Spanish Republic, the San Francisco general strike, the battle of Minneapolis, and the great sit-in movements and factory occupations. Of course, the Comintern (or Third International) played an overdetermining role in many popular struggles of the 1930s. More often than not, it defused the vital energy of insurgent movements, and although the generation of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade demonstrated a remarkable source of proletarian internationalism, it was nearly extinguished in the struggle against fascism which filled the political void in the old Central European empires. In the United States and Western Europe, the struggles of the 1930s won trade unions new legitimacy, and the working class emerged from these struggles with a new sense of dignity. As one of the participants explained, he was "fortunate enough to be caught up in a great movement of millions of people, [which] literally changed not on Iy the course of the workingman [sic] ... but also the nature of the relationship between the workingman [sic] and the boss, for all time." 29 In the first half of the twentieth century, although social movements came to power in Russia and China, the global expansion of capitalism accelerated in the other h:df of the world. The origins of the world economy date well before the twentieth century, but in the latter half of this century, transnational corporations have centralized the world's productive capacity under their supervision. Monopoly production has moved from a national to an interna-


17

tiona! level, and modern technology has revolutionized production through cybernetic control. In 1968, the Third Industrial Revolution announced itself with the publication of the Double Helix, (which revolutionized the knowledge of DNA), the marketing of the first microcomputer, and Apollo 8's rounding of the moon. The space-age production of the modern world, made possible by the global centralization of resources and modern technology, has engendered an increasing division of labor, and in 1968, new oppositional forces emerged in the most developed capitalist countries: the new working class (technicians, employed professionals, off-line office workers, service workers, and students). As the First Industrial Revolution produced the working class and the Second a landless peasantry, so the Third created the new working class. The rapid growth of universities necessitated by the Third Industrial Revolution, the increasing global division of labor, and the consolidation of the consumer society all converged in the creation of the new working class. In 1968, their aspirations for a decentralized and self-managed global society transcended the previous calls for liberty, equality, and fraternity in 1789; for jobs, trade unions, and employment security in 1848; and for land, peace, bread, and voting rights from 1905 to 1917. As we will see, the New Left enriched the tradition of revolutionary organization and tactics: from the formation of insurrectionary parliaments and barricade fighting in 1848; to soviets and general strikes in 1905; to vanguard parties and insurrections in 1917; and finally to decentralized, self-managed councils and the popular contestation of public space in 1968. The New Left merger of culture and politics created situations in which the contestation of public space was neither an armed insurrection nor a military assault for control of territory. Moreover, the aspirations of the New Left in the advanced industrialized countries were decidedly not a dictatorship of the proletariat, but "Power to the People" and" All Power to the Imagination." In 1968, the issues raised by the movement, like racism and patriarchy, were species issues, and at the same time, a new "we" was concretely defined in the self-management which sprang up at the levels of campus, factory, and neighborhood. The chart on the next page summarizes the New Left's relationship to previous world-historical movements. In order to further clarify the new meaning of freedom represented by the New Left, I turn to defining its fundamental dimensions.

The New Left: A Global Definition-------Unlike the centrally organized Third International, the New Left's international political unity was not mandated from above but grew out of the needs and aspirations of popular movements around the world. That is why the New Left can simultaneously be called one social movement and many social movements. A global definition of the New Left does not correspond to the traditional understanding of it as the social movements in the industrialized West after World War II. Such definitions of the New Left obscure its global structure and functions, its international networks, and its universal intuition.

Chart 1 The Development of World-Historical Social Movements

G:w ..J

~ z w :c f-o

I:.

0

1776-1789

1848

1905

1917

1968

Ascendant Revolutionary Class(es)

Bourgeoisie

Urban Proletariat

Rural Proletariat

Urban and Rural Working Class

New Working Class

Emergent Organization

Representative Assemblies

Insurrectionary Parliaments and Political Parties

Soviets/ Councils

Vanguard Party

Action Committees/ Collectives

Vision/ Aspirations

Formal Democracy; Uberty Equality Fraternity

Economic Democracy; Trade Unions; Democratic Constitutions

Universal Suffrage; Unions; Freedom from Empires

Socialism as the "Dictatorship of the Proletarlaf'; Land, Bread and Peace

Self-Management All Power to the People/ Imagination

Tactics

Revolutionary War

Popular Insurrections

General Strike

Organized Seizure of Power

Contestation of Public Space/ Everyday Ute

z 0

1=

< z C3 < ~

QO


19

By accepting uncritically the fragmentation of the world into two major power blocks (the "free world" and the "Communist bloc"), the traditional definition of the New Left identifies the movement in terms external to its identity and aspirations. Despite attempts by some analysts to label the New Left a Communist movement, the New Left was globally opposed by the Communist Panies, and Soviet Marxists continue to defame it.l° For its part, the New Left did not regard the Communist Panies as friends. As an observer in Italy put it: The fight of the New Left in Italy is taking place on two fronts: on one side against conservative forces and on the other against the traditional Left. One often gets the impression that the conflict with the Old Left is the predominant element in the choice of criteria for action by the New Left, since the target they set for themselves is to "unmask" the traditional Left as being "nonLeft," as aiming at no more than an infiltration of the capitalist system in order to reform it; this they regard as a non-alternative, in fact as strictly organic and functional to the authoritarian and repressive system.ll It was not only the New Left in Italy that was independent of existing Leh organizations. As a global movement, the New Left contested the structures of power on both sides ofthe "iron cunain." As I discuss in the next chapter, in 1968, movements erupted in Eastern Europe which displayed a remarkable affinity with their counterpans in the West in their opposition to ideological dogmatism, bureaucratic authority, and cultural conformity. In some cases, these movements self-consciously identified themselves as New Left,32 and activists in the West spontaneously welcomed them as pan of a larger international movement. In the modem world system, nations and regions have complex relationships with one another, and they cannot be summed up by the terms "free world" and "Communist," nor by "core" and "periphery." Canada and Ireland are not third world countries, yet in Canada in 1968, radical students regarded the "co-opting of Canada into the American 'Great Society' as distoning our country's internal development in the broadest sense." One analyst took the matter even funher when he said, "The Canadian student in his university is a colonial, even as the Canadian worker is within his enterprise, whether branchplant or not; and the Canadian economy, within the American empire. " 33 In Ireland, massive marches and the founding of the People's Democracy pany in October 1968 marked the renewal of the struggle for independence. Despite their unity and similarity, however, it would be a mistake to equate the various social movements of 1968. Freedom from foreign domination and freedom from one's own government's attempts to dominate other nations may become the same struggle in the practicality of world events, but they are different freedoms, carrying within them different meanings of the word: More importantly, third world movements cannot become models for those in the core, because the movements in the

20


economically advanced societies must deal with qualitatively different objective conditions, with different primary contradictions, and with different immediate goals than movements on the periphery of the world system. Despite their obvious differences, however, it is clear today that the participants in the movements of 1968 did not act in isolation from one another. When the Yippies brought panic to the New York stock exchange by throwing money on the floor, when the Dutch Provos wreaked havoc on rush hour traffic in Amsterdam by releasing thousands of chickens into the streets, and when the Strasbourg Situationists issued their manifesto denouncing boredom, they were using methods obviously different than those of liberation fighters in Vietnam. Despite their tactical differences, however, all these groups enunciated similar goals-a decentralized world with genuine human self-determination-and they increasingly acted in unison. The practice of the New Left lends credence to the notion that despite the division of the modern world system into three "worlds" (the "free world," the "Communist bloc," and the "third world"), there remains the basic unity of the world as a system. Of course, the uneven development of the world system conditioned the diverse composition of the New Left as a world-historical movement. In 1968, for example, Vietnam was fighting for national liberation and socialism. The United States had declared its independence in 1776, nearly 200 years earlier, and the Vietnamese modeled their struggle, at least in part, on that of the United States, even adopting word-for-word part of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Similarly, their party organization was modeled on that of the Bolsheviks of 1917. The global movement of 1968 was comprised of many components; there were newly emergent social actors as well as ones continuing unfinished struggles of previous epochs. The complete success of all these struggles would, of necessity, be a global revolution-the first truly world-historical revolution. Such a revolution would necessarily involve the radical transformation of the world system from within its core countries.34 Successful twentieth cemury revolutions, however, have been confined to the periphery of the world system, a situation which resulted in the disappearance of the idea of a world-historical revolution, at least until the appearance of theN ew Left. My analysis of social movements focuses on the core of the world system to illuminate the possibility of such a world-historical revolution, a possibility which exists today more in the remembrance of the New Left than in the current world situation. Taken as a whole, theN ew Left was a global movement which sought to decentralize and redistribute world resources and power at a time when their centralization had never been greater. Of course, the movement developed within the nation-state, not by its own choosing, but because of the national organization of political power. Around 1968, however, the growing feeling among social movements in Vietnam, Cuba, Latin America, Africa, and even in the United States and Europe was that they were all engaged in the same struggle. As Marcuse pointed out in that year:

The New Lefr as a World-Hisrorical Movemenr

21

The theoretical framework of revolution and subversive action has become a world framework •.• just as Vietnam is an integral pan of the corporative capitalist system, so the national movements of liberation are an integral part of the potential socialist revolution. And the liberation movements in the Third World depend for their subversive power on the weakening of the capitalist metropolis.u In the 1970s, international solidarity and coordination between radical movements in the core and periphery became even more intense than in 1968. Thousands of young Americans went to Cuba as part of the Venceremos Brigades, helping cut sugarcane during the harvests, building schools and houses, and planting trees. In February 1972, the Indochinese liberation movements hosted a world conference in Paris, and representatives of solidarity groups from eighty-four countries attended. A carefully prepared global action calendar was formulated, and on March 31, the same day that worldwide demonstrations had been called for, a major offensive was launched in Vietnam, one which included the surprising appearance of guerrilla tank columns and the temporary installation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government in Quang Tri. The international coordination of the world movement had never been as conscious or well-synchronized. Events such as these eloquently refute a strictly nationalistic reading of the New Left. At the same time as the New Left's international character is revealed in these events, so is the impossibility of analyzing the movement in terms of its component pans. Although historians have treated the civil rights movement in the United States, the women's liberation movement, and the gay movement as separate phenomena, a global analysis of the New Left considers these movements as pans of the broadly defined New Left. To be sure, each of the above movements had its own autonomous organizations and beliefs, but as the empirical evidence in the following chapters reveals, there emerged an international movement from 1968 to 1970 which fused these seemingly separate social movements into a unified world-historical movement. The civil rights movement all but disappeared as the Black Power impetus emerged, and in 1970, autonomous women's and gay organizations worked as pans of an emergent internationalist revolutionary movement whose main domestic leadership was the Black Panther Party. The imagination and aspirations of this historical force went beyond the needs and beliefs of its various component constituencies. Of course, as the entire global impetus was dispersed and came to be contained within the existing structures of the world system, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the gay movement reassumed the specialized (and professionalized) forms in which they have continued to function as "new social movements." Although the popular and academic understandings of the New Left tend to dissect the fused energies of the global movement, it was in the period marked by the fusion of the various national, ethnic, and gender movements into a world-historical movement that a vision of a qualitatively different world system (or non-system) emerged. Even the fondest dreams of an individual genius (or an official "Great Man" of history, as Manin Luther King is today identified by the mass media) fell far short of the imagination of

22


the New Left when it became a world-historical movement. As eloquent and intelligent as Martin Luther King was, his individual dream concerned racially integrating the existing system. Although near the end of his life he began to discuss the connections between the struggle for civil rights and the war in Vietnam, he did so long after advocates of Black Power had already been persecuted for their anti-war stands. Like millions of other people, Martin Luther King was transformed by the global impetus of the 1960s, and in the months before his assassination, he even began to discuss the idea of qualitatively "restructuring the whole of American society." 36 However revolutionary the Black Panthers may have considered themselves, their program never included self-management of the country's factories and universities (although it did call for community control of black neighborhoods). It was only when the Panthers convened the Revolutionary Peoples' Constitutional Convention, bringing together thousands of representatives of the popular upsurge of 1970, that they explicitly stated the need to radically transform the political and economic structures of the existing world system. (Documents from this convention are contained in an Appendix.) Because the New Left's vision of a new society was never enunciated as eloquently as Martin Luther King's speeches or as clearly as the Panthers' platform, it has often been assumed that the New Left was simply a reactive social movement protesting the perceived injustices of the existing systemthat it was a rebellious rather than a revolutionary social movement. As I discuss later, however, during the general strike of May 1968 in France and the student strike two years later in the United States, millions of people spontaneously joined together and not only imagined a new reality but lived one. Their day-to-day lives were based on international solidarity rather than nationalistic pride; on self-management of the factories, universities, and offices rather than top-down decision-making; and on cooperation, rather than competition. However briefly these moments existed, they offer a revealing glimpse of the possible future transformation of the existing world system. In short, rather than defining the New Left nationalistically, organizationally, or ideologically, I locate it historically and practically-that is, in the praxis of millions of people in the post-World War II epoch. A global definition of the New Left cannot merely be based on organizational ideology, that is, that the "New Left" developed outside traditional organizations of the "Old Left" and therefore was a "New" Left. Nor can a global definition of the New Left identify the movement's imagination and vision solely in terms of specific organizations or theorists. The Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, the March 22 Movement in F ranee, and St~dents for a Democratic Society (SDS) were all New Left organizations, and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Herbert Marcuse were New Left theorists, but the movement extended beyond these organizations and theorists. They were all part of, but not equivalent to, the New Left. The primary defining characteristics of the global New Left include:

The New Left u a World-Historical Movement

( 1) Opposition to racial, political, tmd partriarcluzl domi1Ultion as well as to economic

exploitation. The New Left sought to overthrow the economic exploitation which the Old Left had opposed, but the ami-authoritarianism of the new radicals also opposed cultural and bureaucratic domination. Movemenrs for national liberation and the civil rights of minorities, the primary basis of the global turmoil in 1968, insured that the racism of the society (and of radical movements) would be a central concern of the New Left. The women's liberation movement, itself reborn around 1968, challenged the sexism of the society (and the movement) and brought patriarchal domination into question. There may be an analogy between the development of Christianity and that of secular liberation (as Frederick Engels insisted there was). From this perspective the New Left can be appreciated as having begun a reinterpretation of the scope of freedom in much the same way that the Protestant Reformation redefined the individual's relationship to God by taking out the middleman (the Pope) and affirming the sanctity of individual subjectivity. The universe of socialism spontaneously envisioned and practiced by the New Left included individual freedom within a framework of social justice. New Left activists were concerned not only with traditional economic and political issues, but also with domination in everyday life. Bureaucracy, the oppression of women, the repression of children, homophobia, racism-indeed, all aspects of the existing society-were called into question. The sanctity of individual freedom and the primacy of social justice, values which were a moral underpinning of the New Left, represent a philosophical affirmation of the subjectivity which stands in opposition to. the objectivistic materialism of Soviet Marxism. The attempts to transform everyday life and to politicize taken-for-granted patterns of interaction, particularly in the practice of the women's liberation movement, rest on a belief that economic and political structures are reproduced through the daily acceptance of predetermined patterns of life, a belief that stands in sharp contrast to the ideology of economic determinism. The inner reworking of the psyche and human needs-the cultural revolution-lays the groundwork for a new type of revolution, one which does not culminate in the political sphere, but which would move the realm of politics from the state to everyday lift! by transforming the notion of politics from administration from above to selfmanagement. Through its universal realization in a new society, politics would cease to exist-as least as we know it today. Nationalization of the economy and decision-making do not define the form of the free society envisioned by the New Left. New Left forms of freedom were the decentralization of decision-making, the international socialization of industry, worker and community self-management, and the extension of democracy to economic, cultural, and all aspects oflife.ln slogan form, the New Left's "All Power to the People" -notthe "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"-stood as a political guide to such a free society.

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All this should not be interpreted to mean that the New Left never reproduced the racist, patriarcha~, b~reaucratic, or expl~itative characteristics of the system it opposed. Desp1te ItS many shortcommgs, however, when taken as a whole, the New Left was profoundingly universalistic in its consciousness of oppression and its actions against irs many forms. (2) Concept of freedom llS not only freedom from mllterilll deprivlltion but lllso freedom to crellte new humlln beings.

Compared with previous social movements, rhe New Left can be defined as not having developed primarily in response to conditions of economic hardship but to political and cultural/psychological oppression. The need to change daily life was evident in relation to Che Guevara's "new socialist person," and it applies equally well to Martin Luther King's "new Negro," the subsequent self-definition of Americans of African descent as blacks, and the new self-definitio11s of women, gay people, and students in the aftermath of 1968. The New Left opposed "cultural imperialism" and "consumerism" at the same time as it sought to build people's culture: black culture, women's culture, Chicano culture, and youth culture (as the countercultures of theN ew Left became most widely known). These insurgent cultures were based on a new set of norms and values which were developed from a critique of generally accepted patterns of interaction. In retrospect, cultural precursors of the movement stand out, aesthetic and philosophical qualities that found popular embodiment in the 1960s. Existentialism and Godard films in France, the Kafka revival in Czechoslovakia, jazz, blues, rock, pop art, and the theory of the Frankfurt School all contributed to the creation of a social soul which became manifest in political form with the New Left. 37 The massive fusion of culture and politics defined the New Left's uniqueness, and as a social movement, the New Left represented the political emergence of many of the same human values and aspirations which gave rise to modern art and philosophy. Spontaneity, individual autonomy amid community, and the subversion of bureaucratic as well as economic domination were all values and ideals shared by the New Left, Kafka, and Kirchner.

{3) The extension of the democr!ltic proem !lnd expllnsion of the rights of the

individual, not their constraint. Within the movements, strict principles of democracy were the norm, and bottom-up participatory democracy defined the process of interaction from the largest general assemblies ro the smallest action committees. Although the media often selected specific individuals to focus on, the movement generally avoided selecting leaders, and anyone with major responsibilities was often subject to immediate recall since positions of responsibility were rotated. Among the armed movements in the third world as well, an extension of the democratic process occurred. In Vietnam, for example, as often as possible, guerrilla units would meet before their attacks to discuss the tactics to be used. In some cases, full-scale models of the targets were constructed, and in


25

simulated attacks, each member rotated from one specific task to another until each could function best. Commanding officers for the actual attack were then democratically elected. Once the real attack was launched, of course, orders had to be followed without hesitation.J 8 The democratic process of the New Left was manifested in its internal impetus toward self-management as represented in the consensus decisionmaking process at general assemblies involving hundreds of people; in the autonomy of the black and women's liberation movements; in the aspiration for self-determination for oppressed nations; and in the self-management of factories, schools, and cities during New Left strikes.ln contrast to monolithic Old Left organizations, many tendencies co-existed within New Left organizations like SDS, from Maoism and feminism to anarchism and democratic socialism. Furthermore, in contrast to Stalinist methods of coercio?, the New Left sought to win people's hearts and minds through persuas1on.

(4) EnlllTged b11se of rewlution. At the same time as the New Left sought to enlarge the scope of freedom, so too did its praxis demonstrate the enlarged constituency of liberation. The historical experiences of the New Left transcended a static model of class struggle developed from the previous practice of revolutionary movements. The legacy of the New Left is the enrichment of that tradition, a practical wealth often obscured by the metaphysics and orthodoxy of the "Left" and the "Right.~' Within the struggles for socialism and national liberation in the third world, oppositional forces emerged whose existence could not be contained within the existing typology of class struggle modeled upon previous occurrences in Europe. At the same time as national liberation movements erupted in the periphery, within the industrialized countries, vast social movements were generated whose forms and constituency differed greatly from traditional types of class struggle. In I 968, it was not predominantly the working class and their panies which rose to challenge the existing social order, but groups normally considered marginal: students, young people, national minorities, women, and the lumpenproletariat. Within occupational categories, there were factory workers who helped lead workers' movements as part of the overall New Left (particularly in France, Czechoslovakia, and Italy), but the bulk of the opposition in the core was the urban underdass and the new working class. Particularly in France, the participation of the new working class (or middle strata) in the radical movement was an important defining contour of the New Left, perhaps as important as the hostilities of the Old Left Communist Pany, the Social Democrats in Germany, and the Labour Party in England, all of whom were opposed to the new social movements. As the quantitative growth of the new working class has proceeded through the intensification of world industrialization, so the p111ctice of the Nrw Left Juu dmumstr~ted

the "prolet111ian"aspect of thm middle strata.

Pan of the reason for the inability of the Old Left (including the "new Old Left"-the myriad assortment of "Marxist-Leninist" and anarchist

26


groups which emerged in the 1970s) to comprehend the meaning of the New Left lies in the differing roles played by the middle strata, students, and the lumpenproletariat in other times and places. In 1848, the lumpenproletariat of Paris was wined and dined by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte so that it would fight for him against the proletariat. Indeed it was Napoleon Ill's ability to use these gangsters, thugs, and hoodlums to maintain order which eventually won him the mandate needed to rule France. More recently, in places like GuineaBissau, Algeria, Angola,19 and Greece, the lumpenproletariat has played reactionary roles as well. In the 1960s in the United States, however, when the civil rights movement entered its second phase by moving north, the black lumpenproletariat became the catalyst and leadership of the radical movement. Inspired by the example of Malcolm X, former criminals and drug addicts changed their lives, and rebelled en masse against the conditions of their existence. The middle strata formed the social basis for the Nazi regime ~nd played a distinctly reactionary role in Allende's Chile, but in the core of the world system in the 1960s, middle-class people-particularly women and young adults-were among the progressive forces in these countries. To be sure, there are economic reasons for the changing political role of these strata and for the enlarged base of revolution. In the post-World War II epoch of rapid technological change, new dimensions have been added to the class struggle. The peasants in the periphery are increasingly landless and proletarianized. Millions of office workers in the core are not directly involved in material production but are increasingly seen (and see themselves) as part of the working class.ln the United States, 90 percent of the working population are employees as the logic of capitalism has reduced the possibilities of selfemployment.•o Furthermore, since World War II, the realization problem of capital has been heightened with the growing global surplus made possible by intensified exploitation and technological advances. The rise of "consumer society" -the necessary corollary of neo-colonialism-has meant that the realm of the cash nexus has been enlarged to include production and consumption, work and leisure. Within the post-World War II global system, the universities have taken on an enlarged and more central role. When Clark Kerr compared the economic importance of the nation's universities in the last half of the twentieth century to that of automobiles in the early 1900s and to railroads in the late 1800s, he made, if anything, an understatement. In the 1960s, there were more students than farmers in the United States, more students than miners, and more people enrolled in formal studies than working in construction, transportation, or public utilities. 4' The new structural position of the universities within the modern world system gave rise to a student movement unlike ones of the past, a movement tied neither to "adult" nor "parent" organizations nor to the nation-state. Similarly, the urbanization of blacks and their central position after World War II in the inner cities, the military, and industry were conditions for the emergence of a new type of black liberation movement. Within the black movement in both the South and the ,North, students played a vital role, particularly in organizations like SNCC and the Black Panther Party.

The New Leh as a World-Historical Movement

27

(5) An emphasis on direct action.

Whether observed in the formation of the March 22 Movement at Nanterre oras early as the july 26 Movement in Cuba, the New Left was characterized by the belief that action-the initiation of confrontation-would create an unfolding process that would gradually bring in new supporters and, by its own logic, lead to larger confrontations which could eventually be won. Through the experiences of direct action, it was believed that the movement would become quantitatively larger and qualitatively stronger. Theactionism ofthe New Left was not merely a reversion to pure and simple spontaneity but a new method for the integration of theory and practice. This was the case for New Left sit-ins and occupations, and even teach-ins can be seen as a form of the "actionization" of theory. The New Left's reliance on direct experience and the empirical evaluation of immediate events represented a negation of the Old Left's overemphasis on centralized organization and the primacy of the role of the "conscious element." Although resulting in increased repression and growing armed struggle tendencies within the movement, the New Left's actionism did not culminate in attempted coups d'etat from above. The New Left continually maintained that society could be genuinely revolutionized only from the bottom up. Even the Guevarist strategy of inciting popular insurrection emphasized the need for the vast majority of people to be won over, and the movement in GuineaBissau actually delayed the seizure of state power in order to continue building popular power from below. •2 In the industrialized societies, New Left forms of action, from sit-ins to university takeovers and freeway blockades, were spontaneously developed in accordance with the military and political possibilities of 1968. In the epoch after 1968, popular movements have internalized the New Left tactic of massive occupations of public space as a means of social transformation, and this tactic's international diffusion led to the downfall of the Shah, Duvalier, and Marcos. The pace of change in the modern world is so rapid that few observers are willing to predict what might happen in Europe and the United States with the intensification of the Third Industrial Revolution, the ongoing struggles in the third world, and the baby boom's own baby boom. As the political and economic integration of the world system continues to be strengthened as the twentieth century draws to an end, the significance of the eros effect and the importance of synchronized worldhistorical movements will only increase.ln 1848 and 1905, there were limited communication and economic relationships between members of the world system, and the various movements of those times were relatively undeveloped in terms of their spatial and historical integration. As I discuss in the next chapters, the movements of 1968 exhibited a remarkable international consciousness and interconnectedness, and their meteoric appearance and disintegration is a reflection of the rapid pace of change in the modem world. If, as argued in this study, the New Left was a world-historical movement, it seems relatively clear that future social movements will quickly develop in unexpected explosions, as did the movements of 1968. Having sketched the world-historical nature of the New Left, I now turn to an empirical study of its emergence and impact.

Chapter2

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

OF1968 Those who &tm'Rbt remember the twt ne ctmdmmed tiJ rept1t it. -George Santayana

lf anyone embodied the world-spirit of history in 1968, it was the people of Vietnam. From the American revolution of 1776, they inherited the Declaration of Independence, and from the Russian revolution of 1917, they borrowed their organizational form. During the 1960s, it was the resistance of the Vietnamese people to foreign domination which catalyzed the entire global movement. The prolonged intensity of their independence movement shattered the illusion of the democratic content of pu A meric~m~, giving rise to movements in the industrialized societies aimed at transforming the structures of the world system. At the same time, their battlefield victories inspired anti-imperialist movements throughout the third world. As a global wave of new social movements occurred, even Eastern Europe was affected. Significant social movements existed in nearly every country in 1968, but the focus of world attention was on Viemam, and before the first month of that year ended, the T et offensive made it clear that the national liberation movement had gained the upper hand. Half a million soldiers and billions of dollars of the world's most technologically advanced weapons were unable to defeat a tiny peasant nation's aspirations for independence. Because of the imponance of the Tet offensive, it is there that any study of 1968 must begin.

The Significance of the Tet Offensive _ _ _ _ _ __ On January 31, 1968, in the early morning of the third day of Tet (Vietnamese New Year), synchronized attacks were launched from within almost every major city and town in the southern pan of Viemam. Five of the six major cities, thiny-nine of fony-four provincial capitals, seventy-one district capitals, and nearly every U.S. base in Vietnam simultaneously 29

30


became scenes of vicious fighting.' Over 500 Americans, and many more Vietnamese, lost their lives each day of the uprising, and in the two months of fighting from january 29 to March 31, 1968,at least 3,895 U.S. soldiersdied. 2 The offensive began when a squad of guerrillas penetrated the defenses of the newly constructed U.S. embassy in Saigon. A total of eleven battalions of the National Liberation Front (NLF) entered Saigon, captured the government radio station, and surrounded the Presidential palace. The capital was disrupted by fighting for a week, and the battle of Hue, the old imperial capital in central Vietnam and center of Buddhist/student revolts in 1963 and 1966, was even more intense. A unified revolutionary power was established there, and revolutionary Hue held out for overrhree weeks. It was only after bloody house-to-house fighting and massive bombing (which destroyed 18,000 of the city's 20,000 houses) that the NLF flag was no longer flying. 3 After Hue was retaken, the Western media abounded with stories of the "bloodbath" supposedly perpetrated by the NLF against the people of Hue. A year and a half later, Douglas Pike was quoted in the Los Angeles Times of December 6, 1969 as having conducted an "intensive investigation" of events in Hue in which he concluded that the "Communists had slaughtered almost 6,000 civilians for political purposes." This figure was double all previous ones quoted in the mass media. I mention this because the "Hue massacre'' was such a prominently used attack on the NLF, when, in fact, the vast majority of the civilian deaths were caused by U.S. aerial bombardments.• The mass graves found later had been dug by the NLF and were necessary because of the casualties caused by the air war. The lies surrounding events in Hue were part of a campaign of deliberately perpetrated misinformation designed to intensify the war against Vietnam. From the fabrication of the Gulf ofTon kin incident to the continual promises of quick victory, U.S. generals systematically misled public opinion in order to expand their military adventure. In a move designed to counter the deceptions of the Pentagon, the Tet offensive was timed to coincide with the beginning of the election-year primaries in the United States, and the precision of the timing was such that the attack on the U.S. embassy came early enough in the day so that the network national news in the United States could carry coverage the same day. The fortress-like U.S. embassy had more of a symbolic than a military importance, particularly since it had little to do with the day-to-day direction of the war. The embassy of the United States was, however, a place which the American public could understand, unlike Khe Sanh or Hue. When the embassy came under attack, the public could summon a mind's-eye picture of the place and understand that the war was being lost. The massive offensive did not attack power stations, telephones, or telegraphs and the press was able to wire out reports more or less normally.s The Vietnamese were well aware that theirs was the world's first televised war (a hundred million television sets were in use in the United States in 1968, compared with ten million during the Korean War and only 10,000 at the time of Pearl Harbor), and the Tet offensive became the first televised superbatde. To the Vietnamese people, the lunar new year was not only the most important holiday of the year, it also marked the anniversary of the 1789

Social Movements of 1968

31

surprise attack on Hanoi when Chinese invaders had been defeated by an anny led by.Quang Trung, an epic event in Vietnamese history analogous to George Washington's Christmas Eve crossing ofthe Delaware River in 177 6. Five days before the 1968 Tet holiday began, the General Association of Students in Saigon University celebrated Quang Trung's 1789 victory by recreating it on stage. At an assembly attended by thousands of people, many of the songs and speeches carried anti-American overtones. When the offensive finally seemed over, General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, claimed a "major victory," asserting that the enemy had failed to achieve its goals. By March 9, however, as guerrilla attacks continued, he asked President Lyndon Johnson for 206,000 additional U.S. troops to protectthe more than half a million already in Vietnam. The New York Times of March 10 headlined Westmoreland's request side-by-side with the story that thousands of U.S. troops had been cut off and surrounded for more than a month at remote Khe Sanh. The Pentagon was clearly worried that another Dien Bien Phu was in the offing, a defeat so large it could not be hidden, and in and around Khe Sanh the equivalent tonnage of five Hiroshima bombs (1 03,000 tons) was dropped to prevent an NLF attack. The use of tactical nuclear weapons came under consideration as well. 6 At the same time, as Noam Chomsky's reading of Pentagon documents revealed, one of the factors which concerned the Joint Chiefs of Staff was that if they sent more troops into Vietnam, they might not have enough for domestic control. They knew that sending more troops to Vietnam or invading northern Vietnam would cause even greater disruption at home. 7 All at once, the bottom had fallen out of the U.S. attempt to control Vietnam. For nearly a year before the T et offensive, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and General Westmoreland had insisted that the NLF was exhausted, played out, and all but finished off, but the intensity of the Tet attacks had quickly made it clear that the official reports were far from true. As Frank McGee put it on the NBC Sunday news of March I 0:

It is a new war in Vietnam. The enemy now has the initiative; he has dramatically enlarged the area of combat; he has newer, more sophisticated weapons; he has improved communications; he has changed his tactics •••• In short, the war as the Administration has defined it is being lost.8 Two days later, on March 12, Eugene McCarthy, standing on an anti-war platform and aided by thousands of student volunteers who went "clean for Gene," polled 42 percent of the votes in the New Hampshire primary, only 7 percent behind Lyndon Johnson. In the same month, a Gallup Poll showed that for the first time, more Americans were against the war ( 40 percent) than were for it (26 percent). Finally, on March 31, Lyndon Johnson delivered his most famous speech, the one in which he announced a limitation on the bombing of northern Vietnam, eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops, and a promise not to run for re-election. President Johnson's withdrawal from the elections was immediately hailed as a major political victory by the Vietnamese as well as by anti-war

32


activists in the United States. The dramatic turnaround in U.S. public opinion concerning Vietnam after T et was due both to the battlefield success of the Vietnamese and the firm articulation of anti-war sentiments at home, sentiments which quickly became a majority viewpoint. In the midst of the Tet offensive (on February 23, 1968), the National Council of Churches opposed the assertion that peace could be won by military might and the simplistic view of U.S. policy that the world is divided into two camps: the "Communist" and the "free world." Their resolution concluded: We believe that further intensification of the American military effort would be useless and would contribute to the destruction rather than the realization of American objectives.9 The February 11, 1968 meeting of Pax (an association of Catholics and non-Catholics founded in 1962) took a similar stand by adopting two resolutions addressed to the Catholic hierarchy. One called on the bishops to condemn the bombing of Vietnam, and the other requested a public statement affirming that it is morally questionable to participate in war or at least a statement endorsing every individual's right to decide the matter on one's own.l 0 The calls for "peace now" quickly caught on with the American public, but those who directed the U.S. war machine had little intention of surrendering. Instead, they clung to the same twisted logic exemplified in the words of an American officer who told an Associated Press reporter as they surveyed the ruins of the town of Ben Tre, "We had to destroy it in order to save it." After T et, the whole of lndochin a came under intensified attacks. On March 16, 1968, hundreds of women and children at My Lai were brutally murdered by the company under the command of William Calley. A twentymonth cover-up temporarily concealed this massacre from the American public, but an even bigger massacre-an automated air war-was already well underway. By the end of 1968, the United States had dropped more tonnage of bombs on Vietnam than it had used in all of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed and wounded, and millions were made refugees as the killing became increasing! y indiscriminate and genocidal. During the Tet offensive, the Vietnamese may have freed large parts of their country, but these liberated zones were then targeted for Agent Orange and cluster bombs. When the war finally ended, the total firepower used by the United States and its allies in Indochina had exceeded the total firepower used in all other wars in history combined;ll the Pentagon would count 57,661 American dead and at least 300,000 wounded; a minimum of one million and possibly as many as three million Vietnamese were killed; and five million more were wounded or made into refugees. The spirit of the Vietnamese resistance was not broken, however, by the brutality of the invaders. Despite heavy losses, the NLF moved from the strategic defensive to the strategic offensive after Tet. By the end of the year, 14,500 of the 550,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam were dead, 12 nearly as many as had died in all the previous years combined, and the total number of American planes shot down was in the thousands. With each day that the war

Social Movements or 1968

33

continued, the polarization within the United States became more bitter and antagonistic. At the same time as the circles of the anti-war movement widened, the black movement became more militant. Martin Luther King was one of those who became radicalized by the brutality of the Vietnam War-a radicalization evident in his call for the civil rights and the peace movement to unite and in his denunciation of "white colonialism:" We must unite our ardor for the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach, preach, and organize until the very foundations of our nation are shaken ••• We are engaged in a war which is trying to turn back the tide of history by perpetuating white colonialism .•. In truth, the hopes of a great society have been killed on the battlefields of Vietnam .•• The bombs from Vietnam are exploding in our own country.u Vietnam provided a clear dividing line between those who were "part of the problem" and those who were "part of the solution." The war dramatized the gap between the deeply ingrained notion that the United States is a free country and the all-too-evident reality that the U.S. government was committing the genocidal destruction of an entire nation. This moral contradiction broke apart families and churches,led to the disruption of higher education, and eventually even found its way into the highest ranks of the rich and powerful. In the aftermath of the Tet offensive, tens of thousands of demonstrators regularly appeared in the streets of cities throughout the world, and U.S. embassies and information offices came under attack. The high visibility afforded radicals in the industrialized West encouraged their counterparts in the socialist East and vice-versa. The rising of Vietnam helped catalyze oppositional forces in the industrialized North, forces which in turn sparked new strata of rebellion in the South (the student movement in Mexico, for example, as I discuss below). As the eros effect operated on a global level, so it did within each nation. In the United States, opposition to the war against Vietnam quickly became part of an emergent youth culture. The war crystallized a political dimension to the culture gap which already existed, and the cultural politics of the New Left intensified both opposition to the war and disgust with the politics and lifestyle of what became known asining their colleagues in Los Angeles, Newark, Atlanta, Muskogee (Oklahoma), and Baldwin (Pennsylvania) in demanding higher pay and smaller classrooms.44 In Honolulu, a strike of blue-collar workers was joined by thousands of their white-collar associates and drastically curtailed all public services for almost three days. In seven states during April and May, wildcat walkouts and other disruptions were set off by dissident Teamsters protesting a tentative national

136


contract which their leaders had negotiated. At one point., the disruptions affected an estimated 500,000 workers who were on strike or idled by cutoffs of truck service.45 Tensions ran highest in Ohio, where over 4,000 National Guardsmen were called up under a state of emergency after two-thirds of the state's eighty-eight counties had reported incidents of violence. In Cleveland alone, there was a month-long blockade of city streets and sixty-seven million dollars worth of damages. 46 The original authorization to call up the National Guard in Ohio had not come because of the disturbances at Kent State but because of the Teamsters' strike. Two regiments, the 107th Armored Cavalry and the I 45th Infantry, were on active duty in Akron as early as April29 .If was not until the day after the shooting at Kent State on May 4 that the April 29 authorization to call up the National Guard was amended to include the city of Kent. 47 In St. Louis, trucks and police cars were bombarded with rocks and bricks on May 3 when 300 strikers tried to prevent a truck convoy from leaving a freight terminal. There were injuries and arrests followed by firebombings and shootings. Gunfire was reported in Illinois, Michigan, California, and Pennsylvania. The militancy of the Teamsters Union, however, was a double-edged sword, particularly since by late july, Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers of California (UFWOC) were marching against attempts by the Teamsters to unionize in the Salinas Valley. The UFWOC had waged a five-year battle against the growers, and the Teamsters were obviously trying to undercut the UFWOC's base of support. The epidemic proportion of rank and file contract rejections, dramatized best by the April Teamsters' revolt against their union leadership, had prompted a panel consisting of the construction industry, the top building trades unionists, and Secretary of Labor George Shultz (before his promotion to the White House staff) to propose that the right to vote on contracts be taken away from the rank and file in theconstructionindustry. 48 In june 1970, in a decision which astonished many people, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees could be forced back to work if their union agreements contained a no-strike pledge and an arbitration clause. In the midst of this anti-labor campaign, Nixon and Company incited thousands of hardhats to attack student anti-war rallies. More than 60,000 construction workers rallied in support of Nixon, the country, and the war and beat up anti-war demonstrators on national television. They were skillfully manipulated by the "dirty tricks" of the White House "plumbers." Their union leadership was instructed to tell them that if they did not sign the daily roll at the mass rally, they would lose their pay for the day. 49 Smaller groups of several hundred hardhats had attacked anti-war rallies earlier in the week, and it was later revealed that their bosses had let these workers know they would be paid for time taken off to attack students. It was a vicious circle: The hardhats were losing work because of the economic problems caused by the war; the students who opposed the war might have helped to remedy the situation of these workers but were attacked by them. Furthermore, more than 12,000 unskilled construction workers (mainly blacks) had shut down all construction in Philadelphia, laying off

The New Leh in the United States: May 1970

137

more than 3,000 skilled workers, in a strike for equal pay for skilled and unskilled labor alike. The racism of the construction industry and unions was under attack in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Washington, D.C., and Boston.5° The fragmentation of the population made it all the more easy for Nixon to maintain order through manipulation. From a pre-arranged meeting at the White House where he was presented with an honorary hardhat to the creation of an all-black police riot squad in Washington, D.C. for use againstthe mainly white anti-war demonstrators, Nixon proved that the age-old tactic of divideand-conquer could work well even in the twentieth century. Contrary to what was reported by the mass media, however, students and workers in the United States were not at war. As early as November 1969, workers at General Electric had gone on strike and had received demonstrations of suppon at many universities, including Boston University, MIT, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the University of Illinois (where the National Guard had to be called out to control the students). On May 21, 1970, the day after hardhats in New Yark City, Buffalo, and St. Louis had attacked peaceniks, some of their co-workers marched through New York City as pan of a 40,000 strong labor-student anti-war rally. At this rally, representatives of twenty-eight unions and seventeen campuses came together in solidarity with those murdered at Kent State, Jackson State, and Augusta. They condemned George Meany and the thiny top labor leaders who, by a twenty-seven to three vote, had said that Nixon should not be influenced by the anti-war movement. At the end of the rally, nine people were injured when police unexpectedly rode their horses into the crowd.SI The relationship between striking students and workers on the West Coast was even better. After the invasion of Cambodia, every AFL-CIO county central labor council in the vicinity of San Francisco, representing some 400,000 workers, called upon Congress to censure Nixon "for his deception, dishonesty, and violation of our Constitution," to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and to cut off funds for combat operations in Indochina by theendofthe year.s 2 A full page ad in San Francisco's two daily papers on May 18, signed by 463 trade union leaders (including fifty-three from the building and metal crafts), concluded: "We want a cease-fire NOW! We want out of Cambodia NOW! We want out of Vietnam NOW! We've had it!" A similar ad was signed by 100 union officers in Ohio. In San Jose, California, a standing committee for cooperation between striking students and the Santa Clara County Central Labor Council already existed. A year earlier, there had been a significant alliance between striking workers at Standard Oil in Richmond, California, and striking students and teachers at San Francisco State College. Both strikes had been long and difficult, and the police were panicularly brutal in their bloody suppression of the strikers at San Francisco State. At a joint press conference announcing the alliance, Jake Jacobs, secretary-treasurer of Local 1-561 ofthe Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers said, "It is not just police brutality that united us. We are all exploited, black workers more than whites, but we all have the same enemy, the big corporations. And it is corporations like our enemy, Standard Oil, that control the Boards ofTrustees of the state colleges the students are fighting." n

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After the invasion of Cambodia, there were several union conferences which supported the anti-war movement. On May 8, representatives of 5,000 faculty from twenty-three California campuses met in San Diego and formed the United Professors of California. After three days of debate on how their union should relate to public stands on political issues, the delegates overwhelmingly voted to "condemn Nixon's escalation" and called for the remainder of the academic year to be devoted to bringing the war to an end.H A day earlier in Denver, a convention of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) unanimously passed a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Indochina "consistent with the safety of U.S. troops." Union representatives of the Teamsters, United Auto Workers of California, and the AFL-CIO Amalgamated Clothing Workers signed resolutions calling for "Peace Now." On May II, 800 of the 4,000 university employees at MIT voted to strike for the three demands of the students as did workers at Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, and other universities. Walter Reuther had personally addressed a message to Nixon on behalf of the U A W protesting the escalation of the war and the killing of students at Kent State, and the vice-chairman of the Union of Teamsters and Warehousemen called on workers to speak out against the war and to take the lead in all actions against Nixon. In Detroit and Chicago, a planned three-minute work stoppage on May 15, called in memory of Reuther (who died in a plane crash on May 10), turned into a day-long anti-war wildcat: 2,000 workers walked off the job at one plant alone (Ford Assembly in Ch1cago's Southside), and in all, 30,000 workers struck at twenty plants.ss As a gesture of solidarity, longshoremen in Oregon and Teamsters in Ohio refused to cross student informational picket lines. Ten Chicago union leaders supported the local student strikes, and in many counties across the country, central labor councils voiced opposition to the invasion of Cambodia. At a conference in late june, over I ,000 trade unionists representing four and a-half million workers called for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Indochina and formed Labor for Peace, an organization dedicated to "inform, educate and arouse the membership to act to end the war now." Will Pary, a district secretary-treasurer of the Western Association of Pulp and Paper Workers said: "Unemployment, inflation, war, racism, repression and worthless labor leaders leave the laboring man in desperate straits ... Nixon is the worst anti-labor President we've had."56 In Washington, D.C., government workers began to question national policy. On june l, 1970, U.S. News reported that: "Federal workers, supposedly non-political, are beginning to badger office holders, elected and appointed, on the course of national policy." At least one organization, the Federal Employees for a Democratic Society, modeled itself on SDS and grew out of anti-war protests by government workers. By the summer of 1969, they claimed a membership of hundreds within most bureaus of the federal government, and in 1970, Joseph Califano, Jr., credited them with the capability to "operate as a shadow government." 57 In retrospect, the mass media stereotyped the working class as a solidly

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pro-Nixon, pro-war force, but the actions of American workers during May 1970 reveal that they were deeply divided on the issue of the war. Manipulated by reactionary leadership to attack students, the nation's hardhats provided a clear indication that the trade unions were no longer in the forefront of social progress. Even though many trade unionists supponed the striking students and the idea of a general strike of workers and students repeatedly surfaced in May, the split in the working class and the racial polarization of American society made the actualization of a general strike a project for the distant future.

The Revolt Within the Military In the Army, dissent is a m4jor issue, on a seale unprecedented in the history of this nation. Radical newspapers are being published, anti-war coffeehouses are being opened, and military discipline is no longer accepted at its face value. -Joseph A. Califano, Jr., 1970 After the deaths at Kent State, entire companies of U.S. troops in Vietnam refused to cross over into Cambodia. Their black armbands symbolized their solidarity with the striking students, and their actions were true to their convictions. Combat refusal became so commonplace that separate companies were set up for men who refused to engage the "enemy." It appears that the eros effect of the anti-war movement was more successful in reaching soldiers and sailors than anyone else. Across the country, groups of activists formed coffeehouses for Gis, helped start newspapers,leafletted incoming troop ships and planes, and set up counseling services for those who wished to leave the armed forces. sa Although the nationwide panicipation of Gis in the anti-war movement reached its highest level in May 1970,59 it began many yean before that. As early as 1967, the 198th Light Infantry Brigade had rioted at Fon Hood, Texas and went to the stockade rather than to Vietnam. In 1969, an entire company of the 196th Light Brigade had publicly joined the sit-in movement and sat down on the battlefield. That same year, another rifle company, .from the notorious 1st Air Cavalry, had flatly refused (on CBS national news) to advance down a dangerous trail. The first GI-led march for peace was in February 1968 (during the Tet offensive), when 7,000 people demonstrated in San Francisco. By 1970, U.S. soldiers all over the worldEngland, Germany, and within this country-were marching for peace. The anti-war movement and the counterculture were the forerunners of the GI movement, and when the campuses erupted, many soldiers were quick to join the spreading movement. For the first time, Vietnam veterans who were patients in VA hospitals got involved in the peace movement in large numbers during May 1970.60 Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War helped to lead student strikes on many campuses. Membership in that organization jumped about 50 percent to 2,000 by the summer of 1970, and two years later there were 2,500 members on active duty in Vietnam alone.

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Never before in the history of the United States had veterans so massively protested while the war in which they had fought was still going on. Nor many active duty Gls in 1970 had spent time on the campuses, but the diffusion of the movement's thoughts and actions into the military, while organized by some, also took the course of music and cultural politics, an opposition to the "military madness" of authoritarianism, enforced short hair and the overt repression of the base which contrasted so starkly with th~ comparatively "free" nature of society. Scanlan's reported in January 1971 that wigs were one of the biggest selling items at military post exchanges in the United States and abroad.61 Drug abuse became commonplace in Vietnam among American Gls. Dr. Joel H. Kaplan, who helped set up the Army's first formal drug abuse program in Vietnam, reported in June 1970 that: While I was there, the Pentagon announced that there were only 3500 marijuana users in the entire U.S. Army. My team alone saw that many in our own patient population. My KO (neuropsychiatric specialist) estimated that 50 to 80 percent of the Army's enlisted men tried marijuana once ... I would estimate that between I 0 and 20 percent of the Gis in Vietnam were drug abusers. A drug abuser with a daily dependence would smoke a marijuana joint in the morning when he got up, like enjoying a cup of coffee. He would drop some barbituates during the morning, smoke a couple of more joints at lunch, and in the evening would wind up on opium. 62 A Congressional study in 1971 found that there were at least 30,000 Gls addicted to heroin. As morale broke down, officers became legitimate targets for the rifles and grenades of Gls. The Pentagon admitted to 209 "fragging" incidents in 1970, more than twice the toll for the previous year. The Armed Forces journal reported that in one division, the America), fraggings were running at the rate of one a week and that news of fraggings "will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain uaits." In April 1970, an underground military paper interviewed a former platoon commander, Sergeant Richard Williams, who had served for seven years in Vietnam. "When I was a guard in the Long Binh stockade," he said, "there were 23 guys there for killing their C.O.'s [commanding officers] and 17 others were already on trial for killing C.O.'s."6J Lieutenant-Colonel Weldon Honeycutt, a commander at Hamburger Hill, where his orders to attack had resulted in the deaths of most of his men, was proclaimed "G.I. Enemy Number One" by an underground publication which issued a wanted poster offering a $10,000 reward for his death. Subsequent repons of grenade and Claymore mine explosions near him indicated that attempts were being made to collect the bounty. According to Army records, beginning in 1969, there were at least 551 fraggings which resulted in 86 dead and over 700 wounded.64 Resistors Within the Army (RITA) units were established in Vietnam and the United States, a type of resistancewhichlosingarmies in World War I

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(Russia and France in 1917, and Germany and Austria in 1918) and World War II (Italy in 1943) had experienced, but one which had never occurred in U.S. history. The desertion rates were incredibly high during the period of the student strike. Officially, there were 65,643 deserters from the Army alone in 1970. The number of men who left the military in the six years ( 1967-197 2) reached almost half a million. According to the Willi Street /otmull, at least 500 Gls deserted every day of the week during May 1970. Many went over to the side of the "enemy." The Landon Express reported that U.S. intelligence estimates were that as many as sixty soldiers a week-the majority of them black-were crossing over to the NLF. The Express also reported a top-secret campaign to capture or kill these defectors, particularly since some were using their knowledge of U.S. operations to cut in on short wave transmissions to misdirect artillery fire and lead helicopters into ambush. 6S Resistance occurred in the Navy as well. In March 1970, an ammunition ship was hijacked on the high seas by some of its crewmen and sailed to Cambodia, where the mutineers were granted political asylum. In late May, the destroyer USS Robert Anderson was set to leave San Diego for Vietnam when someone "threw something into the gears." The destroyer was drydocked for two months, and the incident was not reported until June 14, three weeks after it happened. On Armed Forces Day, May 16, 1970, there were marches, rallies, and political rock festivals at twenty-two different bases in the country with the participation of at least forty-three different GI anti-war groups. The demonstrations at five of these military installations (Fort McClellan, Alabama; Charleston Naval Base, South Carolina; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Benning, Georgia; and Fort Riley, Kansas) marked the first time that anti-war actions had taken place there. One thousand people, marching through the meets of Killeen near Fort Hood, shouted demands: "U.S. out of Southeast Asia now! Free Bobby Seale and all political prisoners! Avenge the dead of Kent State, Jackson State, and Augusta!" The military high command was so threatened by the wave of uprisings rolling through the troops that regularly scheduled Armed Forces Day events were cancelled at twenty-eight other bases. At Fort Ord, south of San Francisco, most Gls were assigned to their barracks, riot control, or to digging a trench between the edge of the base and Route I, a barrier against planned demonstrations later reinforced by miles of concertina wire. At Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, all Marines were restricted to the base, and, for the first time, platoons assigned to riot control received orders to shoot to kill in case of disturbances on the base. At Fort Dix, New Jersey, G Is were restricted to base, and the 3,000 demonstrators who attempted to march onto the base were gassed. On July 4, 1970, 1,000 black and white Gls assembled in Heidelberg, West Germany, and were joined by Germans to call for "FreiheitfriT Bobby Selle." As black soldien stepped up their struggle against racism, 250 black Gls at Fort Hood burned down two reenlistment centers as well as one of the base dormitories. Also in July, 200 black soldiers seized a section of Fort

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Carson and held it for a time by fighting off military police.66 The anti-war movement's political outreach to Gls was intensified after the student strike. By 1971, there were at least 25 anti-war coffeehouses and 144 underground GI newspapers. The massive rebellion in the military meant that it was only a matter of time before the United States had to withdraw from Vietnam since its Gls refused to fight. With the return of the veterans, the anti-war movement was provided with a nucleus of leadership in the period after the student strike. The students and soldiers of that time, although segregated into different worlds, came together in the struggle to end the war.

The Cultural Dimensions of the Crisis Tin soldiers tmd Nixon coming We're /i7llllly on our own. This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio. Got to get down to it. Soldiers are gunning us down. Should have been done long ago! -Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young The shots fired at Kent State and the attacks by hardhats in New York and St. Louis were forms of cultural as much as political conflict. Without the underlying current of resentment against long-haired peaceniks, no amount of manipulation could have made construction workers attack the children of the Be-Ins and the Summer of Love. Since 196 7, a new territory had begun to emerge, one where careers and the compartmentalization of straight society had no validity, where money, prestige, and power had been rejected in favor of humanism and naturalism. This new dimension to the culture of industrialized societies may have since become absorbed and acceptable, but in 1970, it appeared as though it was under attack with no turning back. As early as 1963, artists and crafts people had begun to gather in the East Village and Haight-Ashbury. In the summer of 1966, the Diggers began distributing free food in San Francisco, and after the 196 7 Summer of Love, hippies and youth communities sprang up across the country (and around the world). The counterculture sought to create human community where it did not exist. Its political expression through the anti-war movement did not express its total rejection of technocratic culture. Young people broke away from deodorized bodies, shiny cars, and the plastic food of corporate America to live a different kind oflife. Once the existence of Haight-Ashbury, the East Village, and other havens became widely known, people freely migrated to these meccas to live their lives according to their own values. At People's Park and elsewhere, they fought (and loved) police and National Guardsmen who were mobilized against them. The Berkeley Liberation Program, written at the height of the struggle for People's Park in 1969, expressed the militancy of a culture under siege:


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The people of Berkeley must increase their combativeness; develop, tighten and toughen their organizations; and transcend their middle-class, ego-centered life styles ..• We shall create a genuine community and control it to serve our material and spiritual needs. We shall develop new forms of democratic participation and new, more humane styles of work and play. In solidarity with other revolutionary centers and movements, our Berkeley will permanently challenge the present system and act as one of the many training grounds for the liberation of the planet. Communes and collectives sprang up in major cities, small towns, and rural regions. Experimentation in new ways ofliving and in raising new generations of children were begun, and free schools, food co-ops, and collective bookstores were created to preserve and spread the new culture. The "underground" press quickly spread throughout the country. From five papers which reached an estimated 50,000 readers in 1966, the Underground Press Syndicate grew to include 200 papers with six million readers by the summer of 1970,67 and in high schools, there were an additional 500 underground papers. 68 Liberation News Service began in 196 7, and by 1970, it was supplying over 400 outlets with a weekly source of up-to-date information on progressive movements throughout the world. As early as March 1969, over 30,000 copies of the Black PtmtheT were being distributed across the country. The emergence of this new culture was a time of optimism, and the spirit of the New Age permeated all areas of society, making its way, for example, onto the stage in shows like "Hair" and performances of the Living Theater. Electronic music became a significant medium of communication for the new culture and for its proliferation to Gls and young workers. Free concerts in the parks helped create a space where political messages and musical energy flowed together .It appeared that the nihilism of the Beats and their withdrawal from political responsibility had given way to collective action. After People's Park and Kent State, of course, the emergent culture increasingly became a culture of resistance. "We're finally on our own" was what the shots at Kent State meant ro many people. The murders of students at Kent and jackson State had an intimidating effect on many students and young people at the same time as they served to intensify the commitment of others and to spread the movement even further. As the Scranton Commission pur it: During the past decade, this youth culture has developed rapidly .It has become ever more distinct and has acquired an almost religious fervor through a process of advancing personal commitment. This process has been spurred by the emergence within the larger society of opposition, of political protest. As such opposition became manifest-and occasionally violently manifest-participants in the youth culture felt challenged, and their commitment to that culture and to the political protest it prompts grew stronger and bolder. Over time, more and more students have moved in the direction of an even deeper and more inclusive sense of opposition

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to the larger society. As their alienation became more profound, their willingness to use violence increased. 69 A new wave of military attacks from the radical movement occurred during the summer of 1970, a wave which had been building steadily since 1965, as the map on the following page indicates. On june 9, 1970, theW eather Underground bombed police headquarters in New York City, and two months later, the Army Math Research Center in Madison was gutted (and a graduate student accidentally killed) by a massive explosion placed in retaliation for that institution's research and development of an infrared device which had been used by the CIA to locate and murder Che Guevara in Bolivia. On August 7, 1970,Jonathanjackson stood up in a Marin County courtroom with an assault rifle in hand. He freed three prisoners, and they took a judge and a district attorney hostage, hoping to exchange their prisoners for George Jackson (a leading member of the Panthers who was imprisoned for life for his alleged role in a $70 robbery). A barrage of gunfire directed against their escape van left only Ruchell Magee alive. By September, half of the FBI's most wanted list were radicals, including Angela Davis (who was indicted for owning the gun used in the Marin Courthouse raid). These fugitives, some of whom have yet to be captured by the FBI, could depend on many loyal supporters who lived from coast to coast. When the Black Liberation Army and Weatherpeople went underground to begin the armed struggle at the end of 1969, the mass movement lost many of its finest members, activists with experience accumulated over years of organizing. The type of leadership they exemplified in going underground was a self-destructive force in the New Left. By abandoning the mass movement, they negated the promise of a new fusion of politics and culture at the very time when an increasing number of people looked to them for direction. The appearance of guerrilla warfare in the United States was one indication of the legitimation crisis of the state, a political dimension of the cultural crisis which spread to young workers like those at Lordstown, Ohio, who refused to produce forty hours a week, to soldiers in Vietnam who refused to fight, and to housewives who refused to remain politically marginalized. The rupture in the legitimacy of American power and authority, however, was nowhere clearer than among those confined to the country's prison cells. After the norms and values of the society had been publicly called into question by the student strike, a massive prisoners' movement erupted, reaching its high point at Attica State Prison inNew York and San Quentin in California. By the end of September 19 71, more than fifty persons had been killed in the bloody suppression of the wave of prison rebellions which rocked the nation. The majority of those killed were at Attica, where forty-two people died after Governor Nelson Rockefeller refused to negotiate with the inmate committee coordinating the revolt. Attica symbolized the crisis of legitimacy which shook the United States in the early 1970s. Millions of people were no longer content to live by the previous rules governing social interaction. From blind patriotism to restitutive justice, previously accepted values lost their magical ability to mold


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Map2 Guerrilla AHacksln the U.S., 1965-1970

•• •..••

•••• • •

•

•

. I

~

•

.. '• • 'I'

•

Source: Scllnlan's Monthly, Vol. 1, Number 8 (January 1971), p. 48.

••

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behavior. The work ethic, bureaucratic authority, and compulsive consumption were challenged by the generation born after World War II -a generation raised amidst unprecedented prosperity. As the baby-boomers began to develop a culture based on cooperation and communalism, it appeared to many Americans that their children had gone crazy, that the comfort they had struggled through the Depression to achieve for their families was being rejected as corrupt. What the Diggers had said in 1966 seemed to express the feelings of millions of people in the early 1970s: Don't drop half out. Drop all the way out. Anything that is part of the system is the whole system. It's all hung on the same string. Money is the system; reject it. Give all you have to the poor and do your thing. Wealth, success, security, luxury, comfort, certainty: they are all system-oriented goals. They're what the system uses to reward its subjects and keep them from noticing that they are not free. Throw it all away. The system has addicted you to an artificial need. Kick the habit. Be what you are. Do what you think is right. All the way out is free. Previous generations of Americans had accepted material advancement as the goal of life, but with the advent of hippies, the baby-boom generation developed a new conceptualization of the good life, a vision not tied as much to material comfort as to ethical and moral concerns. Their aspirations to dignity and love, not wealth and expertise, and the belief that people-not things-are primary, were of paramount importance in defining their new culture. The genocidal war in Indochina became the primary focus of the culture which hippies opposed, and the synthesis of culture and politics in 1970 gave rise to political hippies (also known as "freaks"). Resistance and opposition to the war were heightened by the fact that although eighteen-year-olds were not allowed to vote, they were drafted to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. From its beginnings, youth culture had contained a membership which was motivated by more than a desire to carve out easy lives for themselves. Material deprivation was not part of the experience of millions of younger people at the same time as technological innovations pointed to new possibilities for the reduction of scarcity and toil. It was common sense that the American Indians have been grievously wronged and that the Vietnamese posed no threat to the United States. The legitimacy of material rewards and the Protestant work ethic, so essential to the rise of capitalism in Europe, were being undermined by the material success of the system. The hippies opted to live humanly in an age of specialization. A newspaper from California, lncarnatirms, put it this way: Scarcity is an historical condition that necessitates repression, not an unavoidable necessity .•. This generation is moving into revolutionary action through the discovery that television and new cars do not save. Salvation means wholeness. Wholeness is not found or made in the private consumption of commodities. The needs, limits, and potentials of organisms in their ecological relations must govern our science and our social being, not the needs of a market system or the fantasies of technicians. 70


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On the striking campuses of 1970, many students attempted to integrate questions of everyday life into their opposition to U.S. foreign policy. One action group at Berkeley wrote: Reconstituting the university means nothing without changing the relationships in our own lives. These relationships extend into our work and into our politics, as well as into our homes. The most typical form of relationship in American society is that of bossworker (master-slave) ••• Our submission as subordinates makes us as responsible as the decision-makers for the policies which suppon the war ("I was just following orders") unless we, like those who refuse the draft, say "N0!"71 The Scranton Commission's repon could make few recommendations for how to deal with the cultural revolt besides commenting on its underlying motivational force: "How long this emerging youth culture will last and what course its future development will take are open questions. But it does exist today, and it is the deeper cause of the emergence of race and war as objects of intense concern on the American campus. " 72 The protests themselves took on an imaginative character during the student strike. At Cornell University, students laid siege to the ROTC building using a homemade "peace tank" to fire flowers and candy at it. At the University of Connecticut, the ROTC building was occupied by over I ,000 students armed with paint and brushes. They covered the walls with flowers, cartoons, and peacesymbols.n At Michigan Tech, about 200 ROTC cadets joined 1,000 other students to build a one acre park in a symbolic protest against the war and the deaths at Kent State. 74 At the University of Denver, students erected a tent and board city near the student center which they dubbed "Woodstock West: Peace and Freedom Community." Over 1,000 students converged there during the weekend of May 9 to be pan of the city which was constructed "as a protest against th~ war in Southeast Asia, against racism in America, and against the slaying of four students at Kent State University." Although the university chancellor ordered people to disperse, no one paid any attention to him, and he was forced to call in the police. Thiny people were arrested, and the city was destroyed, but almost immediately, 600 people returned to the site and rebuilt it, this time with heavier nails and bigger beams. While nearly 1,000 Colorado National Guard and Denver Police watched, workmen tore down Woodstock West for the second time. That night, students returned, but this time "to love to death" the thiny police guards. They moved from one guard to the next and "discussed, argued, agreed, and laughed together." According to the Dm'IJn Post: Several times during the afternoon and evening command officers reminded patrolmen, relaxed in conversation, that their helmets were supposed to be on their heads, not under their arms. The patrolmen responded quickly, but by nightfall the formality had been destroyed, and not one of the nightforce was wearing his helmet.7S

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The next day, 400 of the college's 430 faculty met and voted to support the "spirit of Woodstock West." In Philadelphia, a National Guard M48 tank bumped a car when the tank's steering broke. A lunchtime throng of Temple University students surged around the tank. Flowers quickly appeared in the barrel and "Free Bobby Seale" was painted on the turret before police could clear a path and get another tank to tow the disabled hulk away. At McComb County Community College in Michigan, students performed a guerrilla theater. An ear-muffed jury connected by strings to judges (who were themselves connected to a villain called "Wixon") condemned a black, a hippie, and a student as "un-American." The three were then crucified.76 The summer after May was a time of imaginative and symbolic actions. The flags of the United States, Canada, and the National Liberation Front of southern Vietnam flew above a summer rock concen attended by 250,000 people on the border between the United States and Canada. On August 6, hundreds of "long-haired undesirables" took over Tom Sawyer's Island at Disneyland and battled with police to stay there, causing a Disneyland ban on hippies for several years. As the politicization of everyday life progressed, repression of cultural events intensified: In Connecticut, 30,000 people were stranded at a cancelled rock festival; in Palo Alto, 260 street people were rounded up on july 12, a week after a july 4 street people's riot in Berkeley. The cultural roots of the political movement were an important source of the energy of the popular movement, and the New Left's cultural subversion defined one of its most significant dimensions. The spontaneous integration of culture and politics provided a vitality to the movement, but it also accounted .for the carrying-over of oppressive characteristics like sexism, racism, and authoritarianism into the life of the movement. The photograph of the advenisement on page 149, taken from the April 1970 edition of Ramparts (the forerunner of MotheT jones), is an indication of how sexism and depoliticization go hand in hand. Besides serving to prevent activists from giving and living to their full potential, sexism (like racism) undermines the avowed goals and aspirations of the movement. The consciousness that our personal lives have political implications may have been an insight of the counterculture, but it was made self-conscious by feminists who rose to challenge previously unnoticed modes of oppression. By 1970, the autonomous women's movement experienced phenomenal growth, as women's groups sprouted up on college campuses, in industry, in cities, and in suburbs. Like the black movement, the women's movement contained a diverse membership, and in 1970, radical feminists became the leading force within the feminist movement. That the "personal is political" had long been discussed by the New Left, but never before had the legitimacy of heterosexual relationships and patriarchal domination been challenged as it was in 1970. As radical feminists consolidated their hegemony within the women's movement, women occupied buildings and set up women's centers, and they fought the police for control of their newly won territory.ln New York, the offices of the Ladies Home /ouinal were occupied by women whose

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Photo 4 Ramparts, April1970 Sexism and Depoliticlzatlon

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speculation, with scientific laws not fanciful contemplation, and "with organization and order instead of negation and destruction. "H By sticking to the facts, Comte hoped to attain objectivity on the model of the natural sciences: formal and mathematical, on the one hand, substantive and empirical on the other. Comte originally designated this new science as "social physics,"' and it was not untill838 that he used the word "sociology." 34 For Comte, sociology was not merely aimed at description: "To see in order to foresee: that is the permanent distinguishing feature of true science. "H In other words, sociology was originally conceived as a science capable of prediction. The goal which was to be served by such a science was the "continuous improvement of our individual and collective conditions oflifein opposition to the vain gratification of a sterile curiosity. "'6 For Comte, the progress of science and technology was a basis for a better life for all members of society. This was reflected even in his definition of technology as "no longer exclusively geometrical, mechanical, or chemical, etc., but also and primarily political tmd mMal. "11 From this statement on technology, it should not be inferred that Comte conceived of sociology as an activist science. On the contrary, theory and practice were sharply divorced, since, in his view: All intermixture or any links of theory and practice tend to endanger both equally, because it inhibits the full scope of the former-theory-and lets the latter vacillate back and forth without guidance . . . The new social philosophy must thus carefully protect itself from that tendency, only too general today, which would induce it to intervene actively in actual political movements; these must above all remain a permanent object of thorough observation for it.JS

If as a discipline, sociology did not exist until after the French revolution, it was for the same reason that the conception of "society" -understood as comprising the whole of social reality-did not appear until around the same time." For the ancient Greeks, the polis was the focus for social and political thought; for Machiavelli, it was the feudal state. But with the rise of capitalism, the whole world was subjected to a unified economic process for the first time in history. Previously independent monarchies, city-states, and remote selfsufficient communities became integrated into a world system which broke down the parochialism of manorial life and freed serfs and lords alike from the bondage of feudal obligation. In short, as a world system came into being, the fate of individuals and groups was seen as determined by unified Jaws and existing in a unified reality: "society." Social theory of all ideological viewpoints around the time of the French revolution attempted to discover scientific explanations for the nature and development of "society." We see this same search in the work of such different theorists as Comte and Hegel, Condorcet and Saint-Simon. The intellectual climate in post-revolutionary F ranee demanded that knowledge be sequential, that it move from the less rational to more rational, from multiple explanations to a unified explanation. Within this post-religious context, the

The Rationality of the New Left

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questio~

was. p~s~d: What. kind of agent _co~ld find the order, cl~rity, and rationahty wathan Itself whach was embodaed an the emergent "socaety." For Hegel, Comte, and Condorcet, the answer lay in the human mind. The search for the "motor force" to history, conceived by Aristotle as the "immovable mover" and deified by Christians, Moslems, and Jews as "God," was for Hegel, Comte, and Condorcet the mental organization of the human mind and its "eternal" laws. For Hegel, history was embodied in the "spirit of the people" or in the "Great Men" of history, and history "had a feature entirely different from that of Nature-the desire toward perfectibility."40 It was not until the outbreak of class conflict in the revolutions of 1848 that Karl Marx posited human beings involved in class struggles as the agents of history. Marx negated the abstract universals of philosophy and preserved them in his portrait of a concrete universal with two manifestations: establishment of a "world market" and the self-formation of humans as Gattrmgswesen or "species-being." History, for Marx, was nothing but the concrete actions of human beings in their society:

History does 110thing, it "possesses 110 immense wealth," it "wages no battles." It is humans, real, living humans who do all that, who possess and fight; "history" is not, as it were, a person apart, using humans as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of humans pursuing their aims. 41 The belief in "eternal" laws of history was criticized as "the reflection of man's plight in bourgeois society and of his helpless enslavement by the forces of production. "42 In other words, even though modem history might appear to be determined by immutable, eternal laws of Nature, these laws are not eternal but the historietllly-:bouruled laws of the capitalist world system. The "discovery" made by Marx was that history consists of concrete relationships between human beings, social relationships that "are just as much the product of humans as linen, flax, etc.,"fJ and that these relationships in "pre-history" were (and are) primarily conditioned by the economic organization of society. Social relationships were seen as simultaneously inherited from the past and reproduced in the present. That is the meaning of his famous passage: Humans make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. 44 Human relationships were seen as "not those between one individual and another, but between worker and capitalist, tenant and landlord ... ,'' that is, relationships between concrete human beings in history. •s Theories which pose abstract laws of society as eternally valid take the existent reality and project it as true for all time. To his credit, Marx realized that the laws which govern capitalism (laws which he incompletely discovered and critiqued in Capitalt6) are valid only within the particular epoch of the "separation of the producers from the means of production." In the Gtn'Mn Ideology, Marx analyzed both the rise and fall of the world system:

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The further the separate spheres, which act on one another, extend in the course of this development and the more the original isolation of the separate nationalities is destroyed by the advanced mode of production, by intercourse and by the natural division of labor between various nations arising as a result, the more history becomes world history ... In history up to the present it is certainly likewise an empirical fact that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity, become more and more enslaved under a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a dirty trick on the part of the so-called world spirit etc.)-a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the WOTid muket.47 Whether or not we are Marxists, we now recognize the world as a system, but if it is a system whose goals have not been democratically (or scientifically) determined, how does modern sociology explain attempts to redefine these goals? At the beginning of the twentieth century, sociological theories sought to explain revolutions and social movements through analogies to Nature. Lyford Edwards did this quite clearly in The Natural History of Revolution:" A revolution, in certain respects, resembles an elephant. The elephant is the slowest breeding of all living creatures, and revolution is the slowest forming of all social movements." 48 Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution, first published in 19 38, drew a similar parallel: "The best conceptual scheme for our purposes would seem to be one borrowed from pathology. We shall regard revolutions as a kind of fever." 49 These analogies to biology were the defining characteristic of the natural history conception of revolutions. A cyclical pattern was gleaned from the dynamic of past revolutions, and a temporal sequence not dissimilar to the four seasons in New England was posited as their inevitable cycle: from the appearance of symptoms (the defection of the intellectuals, the onset of economic crisis etc.); to a "crisis frequently accompanied by delirium" (the Reign ofTerror); to a period of convalescence (Thermidor); and finally and inevitably, to a return to "normality" (the Restoration of a ruling elite). Such was the natural history view of revolutions. Although the assumption of an analogy to biology was made with some reservations, it was carried out. This assumption overlooks the fact that human values must be interpreted, and unlike animals, whose goals of survival are simply given to them by Nature, human beings construct goals and values other than those given to us by Nature. Ten years after the publication of The Natural History of Revolution, Talcott Parson's The StTUtture of Social Action appeared, a work destined to be of monumental importance to sociology. Parsons synthesized a systematic model of social action by combining social theory from England (a utilitarian individualized means-end framework), F ranee (normative order and a structuralfunctional system), and Germany (phenomenological analysis of the subjective state of the actor). so His work had the effect of producing a shift from understanding social reality through temporal biological analogies to a static


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system of analytic determinants whose existence was posited as universally valid. The building block of the Parsonian system was the unit act: Just as the units of a mechanical system in the classical sense, particles, can be defined only in terms of their properties, mass, velocity, location in space, direction of motion, etc., so the units of action systems also have certain basic properties without which it is not possible to conceive of the unit as "existing."SI In other words, for Talcott Parsons, an understanding of the goal-determination of society was built from the fact that each "unit act" has its goal, and the goals of the whole system flowed from the integration of the various parts. This position neatly paralleled the economic theory of Adam Smith, but it became increasingly problematic in an era of huge industrial corporations and massive economic intervention by the state (features of both the modem Soviet Union and the United States). Although it is widely recognized today that revolutionary social movements are an important force in the redefinition of social goals, Parsons's theory could not even begin to analyze social movements since it was based on a spontaneously given normative order, an order challenged by revolutionary movements. For Parsonian structural-functionalism, the notion that the normative order "naturally" tended to insure the cohesion and equilibrium of the social system was a presupposition carrying within it the notion that non-normative action could not be a part of the social system-that is, that the vehicle of social change lay outside the boundaries of the system. Within the scope of the Parsonian system, the emergence of new social forces could only be comprehended as eztenuzlly induced; disturbances must, as Parsons tells us, be uintroduced into the system" from the outside. Slln discussing this topic, C. Wright Mills commented: The idea of the normative order set forth leads us to assume a sort of harmony of interests as the natural feature of any society ... The magical elimination of conflict, and the wondrous achievement of harmony, remove from this "systematic" and "general" theory the possibilities of dealing with social change, with history ••• [A)ny systematic ideas of how history itself occurs, of its mechanics and processes, are unavailable to grand theory and accordingly, Parsons believes, unavailable to social change ...53 It is not my intention here to develop a comprehensive critique of Parsons's system but only to indicate his views of how social goals are determined and the role social movements play in transforming existing social goals. Parsons derived his theory of action in the first place from what he called "individualistic positivism" beginning with Hobbes. He criticized Hobbes for being "almost entirely devoid of normative thinking," and at the same time, applauded him for "defining with extraordinary precision the basic units of a utilitarian system of action." For Hobbes, the totality of social reality was the sum of the individual parts, but within that formulation, the problem of social cohesion arose: why and how these separate parts came together to form a

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whole. If, as for Hobbes, the whole is equal to the sum of the pans and the pans are ia a natural state of "war of all men against all men," then the whole's existence is possible only through a "visible power to keep men in awe," a "mortal God," a "Leviathan." The power oft he strong in the state of Nature becomes the legal power of the state. For Emile Durkheim, the whole was not merely equal to the sum of the parts-it was a reality "existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations." 54 The whole was the integration of the parts-that is Durkheim made the leap from arithmetic to calculus in his social thought, a leap which can also be understood as corresponding to the leap from the circular, simple reproduction of capital to its expanded, spiral reproduction. For Durkheim and Parsons, "normative order" played the role of Hobbes's "Leviathan" in maintaining social cohesion. It follows that within this conceptual scheme, theories relapse into an uncritical acceptance of common sense notions of fact and value, the most obvious (and most criticized) example being the perception of the "normal" as opposed to the "deviant." For Parsons, the social system naturally tended toward equilibrium, and any disturbance of this equilibrium was not normal. Parsons shared a world-view with the natural history school in their similar treatment of social movements (and unconventional behavior generally) as pathological or deviant, and because of that assumption, the Parsonian system exiled collective behavior from the realm of normative behavior. This banishment of collective behavior from the Parsonian system should not be viewed in isolation from the nearly simultaneous emergence of "symbolic interactionism," a term coined in 193 7 by Herbert Blumer. In opposition to Parsons's reification of human action into structurally induced categories, Blumer developed a model of society stressing the cognitive interaction of human actors. He went as far as denying the existence of social structures, modeling human behavior instead as a striving for symbolic meaning in the flux of social interaction. For Blumer, collective behavior was meant to include any behavior "not based on the adherence to common understanding or rules. "SS His perspective shared with Parsons a sharp distinction between normal functioning and non-conventional behavior, even though for Blumer, that which was disrupted was a cognitive system of norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes, not a system of interdependent social structures. From this viewpoint, collective behavior was seen as a social~psychological attempt to reconstruct the symbolic meaning and order of the social world. The breakdown of established norms gave rise to behavior that Blumer identified as no longer being cognitively mediated, as irrational: The loss of customary critical interpretation and arousing of impulses and excited feelings explain the queer, vehement, and surprising behavior so frequent among members of a genuine crowd. Impulses which ordinarily would be subject to a severe check by the individual's judgment and control of himself now have a free passage to expression. That many of these impulses should have an atavistic character is not strange nor, consequently,


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is it surprising.that much of the actual behavior should be violent cruel, and destructive.S6 ' In short, the symbolic-interactionism of Blumer and the structural-functionalism of Parsons shared a valued orientation toward the st11tus quo· their belief in the normality of order and the abnormality of conflict mad; both theories highly problematic as time went on. Parsons had succeeded in building a steady-state system of social equilibrium in theory, but the practical movement of history soon gave him reason to try and adjust his model to the changing political environment. His system more or less accurately reflected the situation in the United States immediately after World War II. It was American in another sense as well: Parsons's system was oriented to action, not to thought. It was an actionoriented version of Kant's philosophical system. Although thought was a form of action for Parsons, he posited "doing" as eternal and focused his system on a theory of action, not of thinking. Where German philosophy generally concerned itself with the gDills of human endeavor /IS 11 whole, Parsons took the goals (and cultural values) of the social system as "given" in much the same way as the goals of a biological or mechanical system are "given." The early Parsonian system had attributed relatively little importance to the role of the state in defining social goals and maintaining social equilibrium. To Parsons, the social system was held together by its normative order, and he did not-at least in his early theories-concern himself with the role of the state in maintaining social stability. As Alvin Gouldner pointed out: The focus of early Positivistic Sociology was largely on "spontaneous" social arrangements that grew "naturally" ••• There was no doubt that Durkheim believed the state incompetent to manage what he regarded as the decisive problem of modern Europe, its "poverty of morality," 11nomie •• • In a similar vein, early Parsonian theory, warning of the unpredictabiliries of "purposive social action," expressed suspicion of the Welfare State then crystallizing in New Deal reforms. 57 Only after World War II was it the case that functionalism "began to give explicit support to the Welfare State as a way to satisfy the need for action to regulate the economy and to protect society against the 'international Communist conspiracy.' "58 The consequences of this charge in the Parson ian system should not be underestimated. Once it is admitted that the goals of society are no longer "spontaneously" determined, the problem of how these goals are determined becomes a key issue, one which drove Parsons, the master system builder, to reorient himself to the problems of power in society and the relationship of the economy to politics. He republished new versions of his system both in The Social System ( 1951) and Economy lind Society (19 56). In the latter work (written together with Neil Smelser), the political system was "analytically defined as a functional subsystem of the larger system." 59 Writing in 1969, Parsons criticized his three earlier works on social systems for their "asymmetry between the economic and political." His earlier

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treatment of politics was one which he recognized "to have been quite unsatisfactory. "60 After Parsons admitted the defects in his earlier formulations of the social system, he attempted to account for the role of the state in determining society's goals. His newly found emphasis on the polity led him to redefine the state as "the goal attainment subsystem of any social system."61 This change meant abandoning his emphasis on the primary role of individualized moral values in holding society together. By jettisoning the belief that the social order was naturally normative (that society maintains equilibrium without the need for purposive-rational action aimed at control), Parsons helped pave the road for the rise of modern systems analysis and for the eclipse of grand sociological theory.

Current Research on Social Movements Prior to 1957, there was nota single textbook on the subjects of collective behavior or social movements in the United States. 62 In that year, Turner and Killian published their Collective Behavior 63 and compared emergent norms in collective behavior to conventional, institutional behavior. In 1962, Talcott Parsons's student and colleague, Neil Smelser, reformulated his teacher's system in such a way that purposive social action, including unconventional behavior and social movements, could be analyzed from within the same conceptual framework as conventional behavior.64 In so doing, Smelser helped sociology make the same leap that economics had made through the theories of Keynes.6S In 1968, Smelser went on to single out the "government-andcontrol apparatus" as the one variable which could be seen as "determining the long-term direction of change" in the social system.66 If the government is capable of rational action, then the same could potentially be true of social movements. For Smelser, however, collective behavior and social movements are the "action of the impatient"; they display "crudeness, excess, and eccentricity"; they are "clumsy and primitive."67 There may be short-term instances "when institutionalized means of overcoming the strain are inadequate," but even then, non-conformist collective behavior should be contained by social control

which "channels the energy of collective outbursts into more modest kinds of behavior."68 Smelser perceived collective behavior as irrational, as based on generalized beliefs that are "short-circuited." Although he attempted to analyze conventional and collective behavior from the same perspective, he distinguished between the beliefs underlying each type of action. The notions which guide collective behavior "involve a belief in the existence of extraordinary forces-threats, conspiracies, etc.-which are at work in the universe." They are "akin to magical beliefs"69 insofar as the participants do not believe in the ability of the system to resolve social strains. Folio wing Parsons, Smelser assumed a spontaneously defined normative order, and he exc.luded the possibility that it might be the goals and organization of society which are irrational. In short, Smelser assumed that a consensus exists which approves of the whole organization of society, and any


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behavior which departs from such a belief was conceived as irrational. The view that the whole organization of society has evolved in an unplanned, Nature-like way (NIIturwuchs)-that the whole system in its present form could be irrational-lies outside the domain of Smelser's theory. He accepted the system as it has evolved and as it exists. The very language of his theory indicated his values since he did not discuss human beings but components of action. He neglected to mention that these components exist within humans and that humans may rationally choose to transform themselves. The term "collective behavior," used as it is in contrast to conventional behavior, contains within ita distinction between "normal" and "abnormal" which rests upon a cognitive acceptance of the equilibrium of the st11tus quo. Despite these conservative biases, Smelser's theory (along with that of Ralph Turner)70 played an important role in legitimizing social movements as a proper focus for sociological inquiry. In the last two decades, social movements have emerged as a reality for sociological analysis more or less distinct from those social phenomena covered by the collective behavior field. In 1966, Zald and Ash used organizational analysis to analyze the dynamics of social movement organizations. 71 In 1968, at the same time as worldwide movements were a key feature of social reality, Joseph Gusfield sketched a view of social movements as "socially shared demands for change in some aspect of the social order. This definition emphasizes the part pia yed by social movements in the development of social change ... it has the character of an explicit and conscious indictment of whole or part of the social order, together with the conscious demand for change." 72 With Gusfield's article, sociology had finally arrived at an understanding of social movements as rational attempts to determine society's goals and structures. Unfortunately, sociological studies since 1968 have more often than not attempted to fit social movements into preconceived theoretical frameworks rather than constructing investigations of them as attempts to transform an irrational system. The goal of such studies is either to build upon the accumulated knowledge of past studies or to validate a specific theory by empirically demonstrating the correspondence of the generated facts to the accepted theory. Smelser's Theury of Collective BehAviur, for example, has been used to analyze anti-pornography campaigns,n "race" riots,74 student riots, 7S alienation/6 and the student New Left. 77 Generally speaking, the study of social movements since 1968 consists, on the one side, of middle-range theoretical systems and, on the other side, of fragmentary social research which attempts to validate one of the variants of middle-range theory. The principal approaches to studying social movements include: structut.J.l-functional consensus theories generally derived from Smelser's model;78 social-psychological theories from Blumer to Gurr; 79 conflict theories exemplified in the work of Anthony Oberschall and Charles Tilly;80 organizational theories like those of Mayer Zald and john McCarthy;81 symbolic-status theories as in the work of joseph Gusfield;82 world system and mass society models derived in large part from the work of William Kornhauser and recently refined by Theda SkocpoJ;83 and finally various types of Marxism found in the work of Roberta Ash Gamer, Eric Hobsbawm, and George Rude."

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Each of these theories seeks to explain social movements in relation to

partial aspects of social reality, aspects which the theory defines as significant Consensus theorists focus on the maintenance of social equilibrium and hav~ little to offer about conflict; social-psychological theorists focus on the chang·ing norms of human actors and have little to say about power and economics; conflict theorists focus on the structures of power but fail to explain the formation of collectivity; organizational theorists offer insight into the mobilization of resources by activists but neglect their "hearts and minds"· status theorists focus on the ways in which social problems are cognitive); defined and the interests such definitions actually serve but give little insight into objective structures; mass society theorists deal with the relationship of elites to masses but have little to say about the subjectivity of human actors and the cultural sources of cohesion and conflict. What all of these theories have in common is the fragmentation of the object of inquiry. By presupposing an empirically fragmented social reality, that is, by failing to deal with totality of society and with the question of how social goals are determined, these theorists narrow the possibility of discussion without grounding this reduction historically or theoretically. Fragmented theory restricts the questions under discussion without advancing a single argument for the appropriateness of such a reduction. Methodology streamlines the question of epistemology as schools of thought compete for hegemony within the universities and professional associations while scholars vie for tenure and grant money. For these (and other) reasons, sociological analysis of social movements is replete with attempts to generate objective laws of the rise and decline of revolutionary movements in order to determine specific cause-effect relationships which might be useful in other times and places. Such an empirical use of generalized theory may have the effect of overlooking significant facts as much as making them apparent. It may be possible to mathematically and "scientifically" prove theories which in actuality could be utterly false. Although there may be a certain utility, for example, in understanding the relationship of family background and activism, such a study cannot account for periods of inactivity when child-rearing practices remain fairly constant. The inability of empirical research to comprehend rapidly changing situations and outbreaks of the eros effect makes its usefulness in the study of social ·movements highly dubious. As Gramsci cogently observed: The fact has not been properly emphasized that statistical laws can be employed in the science and art of politics only so long as the great masses of the population remain (or at least are reputed to remain) essentially passive •.. It should be observed that political action tends precisely to rouse the masses from passivity, in other words to destroy the law oflarge numbers. So how can that law be considered a law of sociology?BS There is, of course, a perspective from which finely focused empirical social research can be accorded a moment of truth. Insofar as the standardization of modem society has been conditioned by the extreme concentration of


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economic power, methods which are standardized are not only a reflection of rhe situation but also a suitable means for describing it. 86 Description, however, is not the same as scientific understanding, p:rrticularly when that which is described is but a fragment of the whole. Significantly, the fact that individual "problems, are studied in isolation leads empirical inquiry to seek solutions that don't take into account the organization of society as a wholewhich itself may he a &IIUSe of the paTticulflT problem. In this sense, fragmented empirical research not only reflects and describes society, but it may also have the effect of contributing to the problems of society, even if the researcher is oriented to values of "change, rather than "order." Conceived as a sc~entific discipline capable of passively understanding and predicting social behavior, sociology serves as an instrument for the existing control center of society. At best, a partnership between sociologists and social managers can be built to co-manage social relations. Conceived as an active moment of the popular reconceptualization of society (as is the "interventionist sociology" which has recently appeared in France), sociology might become a means of reconstituting the social order on an enlightened and democratic basis. Given the present ideological separation of fact and value, however, sociology remains tied to a system of beliefs which perpetuates the existing system.

Fact and Value Both scientistic and humanistic sociology are in agreement about the need for a "value-free" social science. In the case of scientistic sociology, the "facts" are "given, in the external world, and the facts generated correspond to that world. So, for example, Durkheim's proposition that "social facts are things" is nothing but the carrying over of the commodity form to the analysis of social reality.• 7 Knowledge thereby becomes a "thing" which can be bought and sold on the marketplace. Such a sociology not only reflects the economic structure of society, but more often than not, it also serves to reproduce it. Modern humanistic sociology, derived from the theory of Max Weber, assumes that human values can be made external to the process of inquiry. It assumes that it is possible (and desirable) to separate research from values, knowledge from action, and theory from practice. The bifurcation of fact and value has its roots in Aristotle's formal logic, but it was ezplidtly systematized by Machiavelli. He wrote The P1ince in the hope that weak Italy could become strong, and in the interests of princely domination, Machiavelli wrote: But my intention being to write something of use to those who understand, it appears to be more proper to go to the real truth of the matter than to its imagination; and many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his

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preservation ... Therefore it is necessary for a new prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to lemz how not to be good • •• 88 In modern times, the idea of a "value-free" sociology was enunciated by Max Weber, who also lived in a weak nation that desired strength. Weber maintained that although values were relevant in choosing a topic for scientific inquiry, the process of inquiry itself demanded a suspension of value judgments. Weber's views have been the subject of intense debate, and it seems that the modern reading of Weber takes him far afield from his own statements. 89 Historically, "value-free" social scientists have not been so free of values. Pitrim Sorokin, for example, took great pains to assert his neutrality in The

Sociology of Revolution: The phenomena of revolution are very exotic and romantictherefore the investigator must be especially prosaic; he has to study with the methods and purposes of a naturalist. The purpose of this book is neither to blame, praise, apotheosize nor to condemn revolution. It is only to study revolution in all its reality. 90 This passage stands in Chapter I, entitled "The Perversion of Human Behavior in Revolution." Gustav LeBon similarly spent considerable space asserting his scientific posture in his book, The Crowd: I have endeavored to examine the difficult problem presented by crowds in a purely scientific manner-that is by making an effort to proceed with method, and without being influenced by opinions, theories, and doctrines, This, I believe, is the only mode of arriving at the discovery of some few particles of truth, especially when dealing, as is the case here, with a question that is the subject of impassioned controversy. A man of science bent on verifying a phenomenon is not called upon to concern himself with the interests his verification may hurt. 9' Th.e reader need only continue a few pages to find Le Bon comparing crowds to worms: "In consequence of the purely destructive nature of their power, crowds act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead bodies." Max Weber, the most "value-free" of all sociologists, called for members of the radical Left to be sent to the madhouse, the zoo, or the firing squad. 92 In theory, value-free sociology asserts a superiority to "value-laden" research, but in practice, the effect of value-free sociology in a highly specialized industrial society is to provide the "control center" with information that can be used to maintain the social order as it exists. That "value-free" sociology succumbs to the control center was demonstrated in horrifying ways during the Vietnam War. Using "value-free" methods, lthiel de Sola Pool analyzed questionnaire results from interrogations of prisoners in order to determine the motivational sources of "enemy" actions. 93 Samuel Huntington helped design the "forced urbanization" of Vietnam: the saturation


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bombing of the countryside which forced hundreds of thousands of peasants into the U .S.-controlled urban areas and "strategic hamlets" -a "value-free" \'ersion of concentration camps. How is it possible that "value-free" social science could come to these overtly value-laden deeds? To some, this question should be answered according to the nature of the particular personalities involved, but what is really at stake here is much more. If, in the name of "value-free science:' such actions have been committed, it is also because "value-free" science has taken on a larger than life meaning, that is, it has become a belief system which obscures its values and impact. In their call for "value-free" sociology, scientists are making commands similar to those of church in medieval society: The positivist command to conform to facts and common sense instead of to utopian ideas is not so different from the call to obey reality as interpreted by religious institutions, which after all are facts too. Each camp undoubtedly expresses a truth, under the distortion of making it exclusive ... Both schools are heteronomous in. character. One tends to replace autonomous reason by the automatism of streamlined methodology, the other by the authority of a dogma. 94 Already in the theory of positivism-its abolition of the conscious human subject and its reification of objective fact-is contained its practical effect: the elimination of morality and the reduction of human reality. Writing after World War II, Horkheimer put it this way: The death factories in Europe cast as much significant light on the relations between science and cultural progress as does the manufacturing of stockings out of air o o o It must be observed here that the division of all human truth into science and humanities is itself a social product that was hypostatized by the organization of the universities and ultimately by some philosophical schools, particularly those of Rickert and Max Weber. The so-called practical world has no place for truth, and therefore splits it to conform it to its own image: the physical sciences are endowed with so-called objectivity, but emptied of human content; the humanities preserve the human content, but only as ideology, at the expense of truth. 9S Herbert Marcuse and jurgen Habermas have similarly interpreted modem science and technology as forces of social domination and as ideology.96 In Marcuse's view, it is the "value-free" character of science which makes it ideology:

It is precisely its neutral character which relates objectivity to a specific historical subject-namely, to the consciousness that prevails in the society by which and for which neutrality is established.97 "Value-free" empirical social research reaches its logical focus by slicing social reality into pieces small enough to be analyzed in much the same way that modern physics focuses on atomic particles, or modem biology is defined

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by the investigation of chromosomes and DNA. These methods owe a great deal to technical advances like the electron microscope and computers. In the case of social science (and possibly natural science as well), the instruments of analysis cannot be exempted from the process of inquiry as if they were neutral methods of viewing reality. They focus attention on only certain aspects of the whole, and by studying panial aspects of society, empirical research (implicitly or not) idealistically posits a fragmented social reality without first proving the validity of such a method. Systems theory attempts to remedy the fragmented comprehension of empiricism by focusing attention on the whole system, but in so doing, posits the existence of the system without proof. I now turn to a discussion of systems analysis, a modern body of theory which claims to be capable of overcoming the fragmentation of empiricist knowledge. Moreover, because systems analysis has become widely used in both the Soviet Union and the United States since 1968, its adherents claim that it is a value-free method of analysis, a neutral means of controlling complex systems which, in contrast to Soviet Marxism, does not place political ideology above "objectivity."

The Umits to Systems Analysis--------Modern systems analysis is based on the attempt to control increasingly complex social systems without necessarily understanding the subjectivity of the members of the system. Systems analysis is thus nothing but social engineering, as Jay Forrester, one of its key exponents, proudly admitted in

1961: Before World War II, basic scientific developments in the world's universities lacked dose ties to the practice of engineering ... Over the last two decades engineering has developed an articulate recognition of the imponance of systems engineering. 98 In F arrester's view, previous methods of social control have been unsuccessful: Labor turmoil, bankruptcy, inflation, economic collapse, political unrest, revolution and war testify that we are not yet expert enough in the design and management of social systems. 99 Systems analysis grew out of the technological developments made during World War II when new weapons systems capable of mass destruction on a scale never before possible were invented. Since ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons require machines to direct their use, humans are no longer capable of making the quick decisions typical of the automated battlefield. "Friend and foe identification," "weapon selection," and "fire-control" became machine functions. In Forrester's words: The battle commander can no longer plot the course of his enemy on a chan and personally calculate the aiming point. In fact, with a ballistic missile he would have no time even to select his defensive weapon. 100


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The influence of modem systems theory has been quite widespread. Under Lyndon Johnson, systems analysis became a tool used in the quest for the "Great Society." After Pompidou proclaimed "It grtmd sociltl," systems analysis has been used in the renovation of the French central planning system. Since 1967, there has been a West German law concerning economic stabilization (Stabiliti'tsgesetz) which explicitly requires features of cybernetic control policies, and in the Soviet Union, systems analysis is an important tool for state planning. 101 In the period of rapid technological change after World War II, systems analysis perceived a tendency for "all sectors of a highly industrialized society to amalgamate into one big organization." Two consequences became apparent: "Social problems became more complex," and "there are rapid and often unexpected reactions on socio-economic or political activities.''IOZ Systems theory is concerned with "problems" which disrupt the normal functioning of the system, but the tendency of the modem system to become involved in crisis remains incompletely explained by systems theory. In Forrester's system, the word "noise" is used to denote such phenomena, and he is quite explicit in his belief that computers can understand social problems better than human beings: Our intuitive judgment is unreliable about how these systems will change with time, even when we have good knowledge of the individual parts of the system. Model experimentation is now possible to fill the gap where our judgement and knowledge is weakest-by showing the way in which the known separate system parts can interact to produce unexpected and troublesome over-all system results.IOJ Systems analysis is a logical outcome of and justification for modem scientific progress. Decision-making was first automated in warfare, and then used to replace decision-making in the society which waged war in the name of preserving its human values. Systems theory assumes that the human mind cannot, by itself, understand the problems of modem systems, but its calculations do not include a thoughtful consideration of social goals and values. lOt The goals and values of the society controlled and managed by systems theory are those which are given to us by the past. Maintenance of the social system as it exists becomes an end in itself, an unquestioned goal helped along by "neutral" technicians and programmers. Perhaps the most influential study produced by modem systems theory, The Limits to GrO'Wth, does make an attempt to deal with the goals and values of society. This concern does not origi1111tt in any way from a rationalistic critique of the whole organization of society but from a realization that unlimited growth is impossible in a finite environment. 105 The study asserts that the modem world system's collapse is inevitable because of the impending exhaustion of earth's non-renewable resources, the accumulation of pollution, the limits of arable land fit for food production, the expanding world population, and the exponential growth tendency of industrial capitaJ.106 The authors simulate various interplays of these factors in order to develop a possible model for the steady-state stability of the industrial world system.

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Their suggested policy changes (needed if the world system is to avoid collapse) include:

l. popular access to 100 percent effective birth control. 2. an average desired family size of two children. 3. a steady average industrial output per capita (excess industrial capability being employed for consumer goods rather than expended in capital investment).I07 Within the dynamic, steady-state society which the authors propose as the only alternative to impending collapse, "corporations could· expand or fail, local populations could increase or decrease, income could become more or less evenly distributed." The authors seek: to create freedom for society, not impose a straitjacket .•. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential: 108 The authors straightforwardly present the real possibility of what appears to be the leap from "pre-history" to "history," from the realm of material·scarcity to abundance. They carefully note that such a change would require more than technical solutions. It demands a "change in human values"; it would "certainly involve profound changes in the social and economic structures," particularly since, in their view, the structure of the system "is often just as important in determining its behavior as the individual components themselves."I09 As they are quick to admit, their analysis is nothing new: For the past several decades, people who have looked at the world with a global, long-term perspective have reached similar conclusions. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the policy-makers seems to

be actively pursuing goals that 111e inconsistent with these results. 110 At this point, they reach the limits of their own analysis. They have arrived at the conclusion that the current system is headed for collapse and that the world's policymakers are doing nothing to avoid it-indeed, these policymakers may be contributing to the very possibility of collapse. But how do they explain this? Can they explain it using their tools of analysis? What are the dynamics of the structures of society whid~ account for this headlong dash for collapse? In one phrase, they cannot explain why this condition exists. As they themselves are careful to point out, social factors cannot be included in their model: Neither this book nor our world model at this stage in its development can deal explicitly with these social factors, except insofar as our information about the quality and distribution of physical supplies can indicate possible future social problems. 111


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The authors note with concern that the gap between the core and periphery-between rich nations and poor nations-is widening and that between ten and twenty million people die each year from malnutrition.'12 Their analysis makes clear that the present system, one based on continual economic growth, cannot relieve this situation but actually is making it worse. m Within the confines of their system of analysis, however, this problem becomes an "imponderable political question."114 They can neither explain why the world's policymakers are rushing headlong towards collapse nor why the gap between rich and poor nations is widening. The blindness of even the best-intentioned systems analysis is shared by all forms of analysis which pose the categories of the present system as eternal ones. In The Limits of GrO'Wth, "capital" is considered an eternal "fact" and large-scale industrial production an eternal need. From these premises flow such assumptions as the cause of pollution lying in the indi'IJidwl desire for a higher standard of livingiU (a crucial assumption in terms of their specific model since a direct correlation between population growth and pollution is one of the key reasons they suppon binh control). Decentralization and self-sufficiency cannot be comprehended by their analysis as possible solutions to the crisis of the centralized world system; on the contrary, their view is that: "many nations and people, by taking hasty remedial action or retreating into isolationism and attempting self-sufficiency, would but aggravate the conditions operating in the system as a whole. " 11 6 It is here that the limits of the systems analysis become quite clear: By posing the system as the unit of analysis in the first place, there is no capacity to comprehend a reality which contradicts the existence of the system. The presuppositions of systems analysis as well as its goals of systematic control render it incapable of any point of view other than that of the control center. The logic of systems analysis, reflecting as it does the historical reality of the growth of the world system, eternally binds it to the continuation of that system. Other possibilities such as a decentralized, self-determined, self-sufficient network ofbio-regional communitiesll7 cannot be imagined from within the scope of systems analysis. By defining its goal as control of rhe social system, systems analysis joins hands with whomever sits at the control center. Whether or not it attempts to influence policymakers to adopt new policies, systems analysis conceives of problems and solutions from the point of view of the centralized system, and its values and morality reflect the needs of the control center.lt has helped automate "judgment" so that weapons of mass destruction can be used in warfare between competing states, without asking whether or not these weapons should be used. Similarly, it has helped design methods of coordinating the modern social system without questioning the rationality of the system itself. Systems theory's promise for "constructing a rational and decent society" liB seems to be falsified in its acceptance of the meaning of the "rational" as merely instrumental rationality (Zwetkrltitmalitilt or rationality for technical results ).Its roots in nuclear war should be cause for concern with its present application in social control. Systems theory knows no human subjectivity, no morality: Its rationality knows no genuine values

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( Wertratitmalita"t). So long as it works to help the system deliver the goods and maintain its stability, it can at best guarantee "prosperity without freedom."ll9 Systems analysis is a useful tool in maintaining what C. Wright Mills called "the Cheerful Robot," 120 but its utility in helping design a genuinely rational society is dubious. Systems theory appears to be only a method, but insofar as it is a method which does not explicitly take up the question of the goals of the whole organization of society, it is a method for perpetuating the social goals which already exist. 121 The possibility that the members of society could democratically enunciate more rational goals than those inherited from the past is excluded in advance. According to Niklas Luhmann, a leading German theoretician of systems theory, the expansion of democracy is incompatible with the "rationality" of systems theory: Decision processes are ••• processes of eliminating other possibilities. They produce more "nays" than "yeas," and the more rationally they proceed, the more extensively they test other possibilities, the greater becomes their rate of negation. To demand an intensive, engaged panicipation of all [members of society] in them would be to make a principle of frustration. Anyone who understands democracy in this way has, in fact, to come to the conclusion that it is incompatible with rationality. 122 Non-panicipatory central planning may (or may not) be the most efficient way for the modern system to function, but it is indeed the most rational only if "rationality" is understood as purely instrumental, devoid of moral and ethical questions.UJ Such a view does not allow the questions to be raised: What if the centralized structures of the system as they exist prove unable to solve the control problems? Indeed, what if these existing structures are themselves the cause of these problems? In short, systems theory reduces human problems to technical ones. By viewing problems of socilll integration as problems of system integration, systems theory translates potential problem solutions to the one dimension of improving the system. Progress is thereby transformed into the process of increasing the power of the system over environmental complexity. The perceived tendency of "society to amalgamate into one big organization" is thereby reproduced by the theory which perceives this tendency and attempts to control it. Systems analysis is useful only insofar as a solution to problems of centralized control is involved. By positing itself as a means for control of the system, systems theory obstructs genuine understanding and serves to maintain the status quo. Real understanding, that is, Social Science, as opposed to socW technq/Qgy, must begin elsewhere, as Habermas argues: Among other things, social systems are distinguished from machines (with learning capacity) and from organisms by the fact that subjective learning processes take place and are organized within the framework of ordinary language communication. A systems concept which is more appropriate to the social sciences •.. can therefore not be taken over from general systems theory; it


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must be developed in relation with a theory of ordinary language communication, which also takes into consideration the relationship of intersubjectivity and the relation between ego and group identity.124 Inasmuch as the system is a model of mathematical constructions which are taken as reality, systems theory is ideology. As Adorno analyzed it: The system, the form of presenting a totality to which nothing remains extraneous, absolutizes the thought against each of its components and evaporates the content in thoughts. It proceeds idealistically before advancing any arguments for idealism.m Systems theory knows no life, no flesh and blood humans. Its 1lphll and omega are contained in its models and "mathematical elegance" which cannot be empirically verified nor epistemologically justified. 126 When this "elegance" of mathematics is held up for closer scrutiny, its human content is found to be non-existent. Indeed, in Marcuse's view, formal and mathematical logic is fundamentally untrue: Thought is true only insofar as it remains adapted to the concrete movement of things and closely follows its various turns. As soon as it detaches itself from the objective process and, for the sake of some spurious precision and stability, tries to simulate mathematical rigor, thought becomes untrue. 127 In its "mathematical elegance," systems theory imagines itself to be free from biases and values which might obstruct its "pure understanding." Society is perceived as eternally existing as it is: There is no room for the creation of new dimensions to it. Within their models, systems theorists cannot conceive of new technological means of production which do not consume and dominate Nature. Their "mathematical elegance" cannot accurately predict technological developments whereby limited supplies of raw materials could be renewed or replaced. Neither can they predict with certainty the concrete mechanisms of population growth and the earth's capacity to absorb industrial pollution.12B In short, their "mathematical elegance" is in their model: The real living world is not.

Critique of Soviet Marxism _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Since the October Revolution, Marxism in the Soviet Union has been transformed from a means for liberation and subversion of the established reality into an instrument of domination and justification for the new social order. After 1917, the quantitative proliferation of Communist Parties throughout the world under the leadership of the Comintern resulted in the qualitative reduction and standardization of what had been the diverse theory and practice of the European socialist movement. By developing a critique of Soviet Marxism as it exists, I hope to locate theoretical presuppositions which

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led to the hostility of Soviet Marxists to the New Left and to explain why Soviet Marxism is incapable of questioning the existing structures of society.

Philosophical Foundations What unites the various categories of Soviet Marxism in the modern world is a reduction of Marxism from a synthesis of rationalistic philosophy and empirical science to a scientific naturalism independent of human will and imagination. Following in the footsteps of Engels, modern Soviet Marxism considers natural reality to be the ultimate touchstone upon which the facticity of the dialectical method can be evaluated. Given only this empirical foundation, the humanistic critique of the established reality, an essential element of revolutionary Marxism, is lost. A dialectical Marxism worthy of its name is rooted both in the internal development of philosophy as well as in the empirical foundations of natural science.l 29 By posing the "existence of Nature as it is," Soviet Marxism fails to comprehend the mental activity required to construct a fact-the epistemological problematic-and instead asserts the rules of natural science as the only methodology useful for the study of social reality. The rules of natural science, such as those used by Marx in Capital to exhibit some of the necessary laws which operate within the capitalist system, have a validity rooted in the structures of the world system. But the moment of truth in such a methodology reaches its limit when the focus of investigation becomes the human transformation of the existing system. Soviet Marxism insists that the science of history can be as precise a science as biology and can be applied to practical decisions. This variety of "scientific" Marxism fails to differentiate between the naturally given realities of biology and the humanly constructed nature of the social world. However, a better reading of Marx is found here: The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic-in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.ll0

It should be said here that Marx never tired of criticizing what he called "crude Communism" for not centering on the human essence, the human subject of social reality, but operating in a world of things. The discovery of the Ec01111mic and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1930 gave impetus to a revolutionary transformation of the conceptual framework within which Soviet Marxism continues to operate today. In the early work of Marx, and in his last work, Capital, political economy was derived from philosophical concepts. Indeed, the crucial breakthrough made by Marx was the transformation of economic facts into human factors. Capital was never defined as a thing by Marx. On the contrary, at every point in the development of his scientific theory, he unmasked what had been


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regarded as the property of the capitalist as stored-up dead labor, as "objectified labor, i.e., labor which is present in space."ut Even the exchange value of Nature was seen by Marx (rightly or wrongly) as contingent upon the embodied human labor required to extract raw materials from their natural locations. Soviet Marxism does just the opposite, making economic facts out of human relationships. But even in the writings of Marx, there are elements which may be said to have been preconditions for the hegemony of positivism within contemporary Soviet Marxism. Marx approved of the comparison made by some between the phenomena of economic life he analyzed in Capital and the history of biological evolution analyzed by Darwin, and Marx's disciples, particularly Engels, admiringly referred to Ct~pit~tl as following in the scientific tradition of Copernicus and Galileo. More recently, Althusser has referred to this analysis by Engels as "pages of extraordinary theoretical profundity." Within the writings of Marx, the roots of the scientistic reduction can be traced to his conception of the self-constitution of the human species as taking place only within the sphere of material production. That presupposition excludes important aspects of human existence from consideration. Furthermore, the fetishizarion of work, not its quantitative reduction or qualitative transformation, has become the position of dogmatic theory. The theoretical reasons why Soviet Marxism romanticizes the working class and the process of production can be found in the belief that the self-formation of the human species occurs solely through labor. Within the empirical parameters of Soviet Marxism, labor means work, not the broader process of the human transformation of Nature ("inner" as well as external Nature). Although Marx's emphasis on the role oflabor in the self-formation of the species has been interpreted to exclude other dimensions of human action (like political praxis, an, and communication), these comprise significant domains within which the human species transforms itself into a "species-being." In other words, revolutionary praxis is a second dimension of self-formation, and events like May 1968 and May 1970 constitute a vital means through which the human species becomes rational. From this perspective, Soviet Marxism's hostility to the New Left can be traced to its labor metaphysic and its belief in the Party's absolute righteousness. The "absolute truths" of Soviet Marxists are predicated on theoretical presuppositions like the formal logic of natural science and the Party's claim to be the exclusive embodiment of the scientific application of the logic of historical development. By making Marxism into an abstract scheme universally applicable through the Communist Parties of the world, the living subjects of the concrete history of human society-the "little people" (as well as the dialectical logic of Marx which conceived human beings as the creators of their social reality)-are destroyed, buried beneath the rule of bureaucratically organized science. Such a Marxism regards the workings of thingsparticularly the "economic base"-as determining the consciousness and praxis of human beings. By transforming the dialectical method into a universally applicable system of "base-superstructure," Soviet Marxism elevates its truth to a new metaphysic. Reality is poured into a bottle of static "scientific" propositions,

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reducing knowledge from a living human praxis to a dead formalistic model. As Marcuse pointed out: While not a single of the basic dialectical concepts has been revised or rejected in Soviet Marxism, the function of the dialectic itself has undergone a significant change: it has been transformed from a mode of critical thought into a universal "world outlook" and universal method with rigidly fixed rules and regulations, and this transformation destroys the dialectic more thoroughly than any revision ..• The first step in this was made by Engels in his

Dialectics of Nature.m It is not only the formalistic methodology of onhodoxy but the content of its imposed forms which are called into question by a critical social science. The language itself-that is, the words "base" and "superstructure" -belie a simplicity of analysis which, within the methodology of universally valid scientific knowledge, destroys the possibility of the transformation of the qualities of human beings and of our collectively constructed reality. Especially in the modern world where the state plays a greater role in the economy, it is increasingly difficult to accept the vulgar dichotomy of base and superstructure. It is within this framework that Soviet Marxism can be seen as predicated on a metaphysical, trans-historical idealism. As LuHcs observed in History and Chss Conscioumess, what is common to all bourgeois systems of analysis is the inability to formulate the categories of the present as other than eternal ones. Modern orthodoxy is predicated on a negation of the power of human reason and imagination as being ideological and unscientific. Parallel to the effect of sociological positivism, reality is thereby reduced to what exists as it is, and the definition of the totality of human existence excludes the possibility-indeed the necessity-of the qualitative transformation of the categories of social reality. As Marcuse put it: In a society whose totality was determined by its economic relations to the extent that the uncontrolled economy controlled all human relations, even the non-economic was contained in the economy. It appears that, if and when this control is removed, the rational organization of society toward which critical theory is oriented is more than a new form of economic regulation. The difference lies in the decisive factor, precisely the one that makes society rational-the subordination of the economy to the individuals' needs. The transformation of society eliminates the original relation of substructure and superstructure. m By negating philosophy, Soviet Marxism fails to strengthen liberatory mass movements, and in practice, as we have seen in 1968, seeks to crush them. Philosophy provided the basis for Marx's theory and practice, but Soviet Marxism misses the dynamics of society and revolution in their human essence


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by rejecting the rationalistic foundations of Marxism. The class struggle, proletarian revolution, and freedom are retained, but as metaphysical truths. The "scientific" method of Soviet Marxism has become a static shell of empty logic universally applicable yet increasingly irrelevant to the liberation of human beings. In the modem world where the technocratic ideology permits the rule of expens and elites, is it surprising that a justification for the reduction of Marxism from the philosophy of the revolutionary proletariat to the science of the Party is done in the name of Science? The dominant ideology of our time, in contrast to the era in which Marx articulated his revolutionary philosophy, is technocratic materialism, not religious idealism. The elites of today, whose hegemony depends on the docility of their followers, rely on people remaining convinced of their own inability to think and act properly without the presence of expetts. Within the Communist Patties, a strata of high priests of Marxism has been created to interpret the needs of "the revolution" for the members of the Patty as well as for the working class. In the United States, under the conditions of monopoly production, the reduction of Marxian theory to a set of rigid categories has resulted in the standardization of thought common to the sectarian Left. Under similar conditions in France, but with a more conscious base among the working class, the reification of Marxism is an important reason for the Communist Patty's antipathy toward the popular movement of May 1968, whose constituency and visions were not and are not comprehensible from within the myopic world view of "scientific" Marxism. The "scientific" treatment of Marxism may be seen as a reinterpretation of Marx from within the dominant scientistic ideology of the modem world system. A failure to break with the mentality of mass society has resulted in a fetishized treatment of Marx and Lenin. These "great men" of history have been turned into commodities by the savants of onhodoxy. Each sect resembles a collective capitalist struggling to reap as much profit (cadre) from the popular movement as possible, each selling their version of the "real thing." The house dogmas which patty members freely recite are more in the tradition of a catechism than a questioning and critique of the established reality. In few groups do activists learn to think about issues as a process of open scientific investigation. Instead the answers (and the questions) are provided by "higher ups." Such standardization of thought parallels, not negates, the dominant ideology of our society. The reduction of Marxism from the philosophy of the proletariat to the science of the Patty has necessitated its rejection of humanism. In the aftermath of the New Left, Louis Althusser consistently reinterpreted Marxism from a "scientific" perspective, attacking intellectuals like Sartre and Marcuse as "petit-bourgeois" and systematically revising Marxism in an attempt to exorcise the 44 evil spirit" of humanistic philosophy. The events of May 1968 may have brought the French Communist Pany thousands of new members, but as I discuss below, the theory of the Pany after 1968, at least as Althusser developed it, helped contribute to the continuing irrelevance of that group.

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The Ideology of Althusser's Marxism The scientific interpretation of the works of Marx as enunciated by Louis Althusser posit an "epistemological rupture" between the early "philosophical" Marx and the older "scientific" Marx: "This 'epistemological break' divides Marx's thought into two long essential periods: the 'ideological' period before, and the scientific period after, the break in 1845 ."134 Althusser went on to classify the writings of Marx into four more precise periods culminating in the "mature Marx" after 1857. The impositions of these constructed periods, and most importantly, the "essential" duality between the young, philosophical and old, scientific Marx, are themselves ideological. Despite the beliefs of the Althusserians that they are "non-ideological" scientists, it is possible to indicate the self-serving nature of their interpretation of Marxism by discussing epistemological aspects within the Althusserian paradigm: the abolition of the subject of history and the differentiation between ideology and science. In contrast to the humanism of the young Marx, Althusser insisted that Marxism is a science devoid of humanistic considerations. Humanistic Marxism was viewed as ideology, which if accepted by scientific Marxists, would "cut ourselves off from all knowledge."llS Unlike scientific theory, philosophy was seen by Althusser as a reflection of ideology from which a science might develop, but only as a result of an "epistemological rupture." According to Althusser: Without sciences, no philosophy, only world outlooks ... The ultimate stake of philosophical struggle is the struggle for hegemony between the two great tendencies in world outlook (materialist and idealist). The main battlefield in this struggle is scientific knowledge: for it or against it. The number one philosophical battle therefore takes place on the frontier between the scientific and the ideologicaJ.'l6 To draw the line between science and ideology as Althusser does in the above quotation is to fail to recognize the ideological nature of science. Fortunately, in the course of dehumanizing Marxism, Althusser dealt squarely with our objection while criticizing Gramsci: Gramsci constantly declares that a scientific theory, or such and such a category of science, is a "superstructure" or a "historical category" which he assimilates to a "human relation" ... Science can no more be ranged within the category "superstructure" than can language, which as Stalin showed escapes it.m By elevating science to the status of pure knowledge, Althusser served the cause of the ideology of science which today is the primary system of belief within the economically advanced societies. This scientific ideology manifests itself in a variety of myths, particularly in the belief that all problems can be solved through the application of technology and the authority of experts. After asserting that science is not part of the "superstructure," that it is an eternal truth, Althusser's next step was to make philosophy the "study of


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theoretical practices," providing a framework for the activity of philosophers as the "high priests" of the Communist Party, while divorcing philosophy from the rank and file. For Althusser, "historical materialism" was the science of history or the science of social formations, while "dialectical materialism" was Marxist philosophy. This dualistic conception of reality is, of course, ideological. The specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge, reflecting the fragmentation of the productive process, is itself false consciousness which overlooks the philosophical basis of all science, and, in particular, overlooks the development of the Marxian critique of political economy from its philosophical roots and method. Furthermore, Althusser's contrived "epistemological rupture" in Marx, meant to purge the philosophical aspects of the "young" Marx, demonstrates how different his notion of rupture was from Marx's notion of "Aufhebung," the development of the new from within the old, negating the old while retaining key properties at a higher level, and decidedly not jettisoning the past altogether. In the name of science, Althusser insisted upon the need not to stray into the "individualist-humanist error" of conceiving that "the subjects of history are 'real, concrete men.'" Who, then, if anyone, are the subjects of history? The reply from Althusser: The "subjects" of history are given human societies. They present themselves as totalities whose unity is constituted by a certain specific type of complexity, which introduces instances, that, following Engels, we can, very schematically, reduce to three: the economy, politics, and ideology. So in wery society we can posit ••• the existence of an economic activity as the base, a political organization and "ideological" forms. us In a later work, Althusser went on to comment on the rejection of the views of the young LuHcs by the Comintern: The Marxist tradition was quite correct to return to the thesis of the Dialectics of Nature, which has a polemical meaning that history is a process without a subject, that the dialectic at work in history is not the work of any Subject whatsoever, whether Absolute (God) or merely human, but that the origin of history is always already thrust back before history, and therefore that there is neither a philosophical origin nor a philosophical subject to History . 139 In the context of the ossification of the Communist Parties of Europe as bureaucratic structures above the people, Althusser developed a scientific defense. History has no subject, or if it does, it is given as society. "The people make history," a truism of Marxism, is rejected, and the role of revolutionary philosophy as a part of the autonomous actions of the people is eliminated in favor of a science which guides the Party. Thus, the implications of Althusser's dissection of the works of Marx are a reduction of the substance of Marxism to a technocratic ideology, that is, the degeneration of scientific Marxism into a justification for the facticity of the given. In a period when the working class became contained within the

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consumer society of the "Free World" and the ideology ofthe Party became a means of justifying the bureaucratic reality in "socialist" societies, the New Left transcended each development from the perspective of the un-freedom of the modern world, and in its imagination was the potential of a qualitative step forward for human beings. In contrast to the view put forth by academic sociology and by Soviet Marxism that philosophy is nothing more than the expression of a specific social situation-ideology-the New Left returned to a conception of human beings as creative, rational beings who are not simply determined by the given reality. In this context, philosophy becomes socially realizable through the human transformation of the status quo. The New Left's philosophical project was the pursuit of "Reason" and "Truth" as part of the popular reconstruction of the social world, not simply an ideological activity reserved for the upper echelons of the Party or the inner sanctum of the corporate university. In so doing, it helped preserve the possibility of a real "leap into freedom" at a time when even the notion of human liberation was in danger of scientific reduction.

APPENDIX: DOCUMENTS Document 1 Governor Ronald Re11g1111's Speech during "Opmtion C11blesplicer" Governor's Orientlltion-10 Febf'Uilf'y 19691 Thank you, General Ames, General Larson, members of the Military, members of the Legislature, and Administration and you gentlemen who are present. You know there are some people in the state, who, if they could see this gathering right now, and my presence here would decide their worst fears and convictions had been realized-I was planning a military takeover. If I hesitate, and incidentally, I think you should know, as Mark Anthony said when he entered the tent of Cleopatra, "I did not come here to make a speech." I am supposed to say a few words of welcome and perhaps mention the subject that has brought you together. If I hesitate to do that, to use the term emergency in discussing law and order and crime, I hope you will understand I am a linle fed up with emergencies lately. I have thought it would be nice if we could lump some of our emergencies together. Like certain people in certain academic circles who have been of trouble lately; if we could mix them with the oil and then have the flood. I'm even denied the usual thing that any speaker in California can start with-he can always have a few words about the weather and I'm a linle sensitive about that lately. It has been raining so much here that it's hard to tell land and sea apart. But then, we figured that out-the ocean is the part with the oil on top. But you are here to discuss plans and the furtherance of your occupation and your professions, you are concerned with lawbreaking, with preserving the peace and the rights, preserving at the same time the rights of the citizenthis is your business-your daily work. Whether you are of the military and • Thia document wu provided by the Center for National Security Studia. Scamped "For Official Use Only," itprovidea ua with thespc:ec:h given by Ronald Reagan at the conclusion of "Operation Cableapliccr," a command-levd exercise which simulated a military takeover of the United Statea (u explained in Document 2). N .8.: Theae documents are reproduced here exactly u they appeared in the original, including aU spelling mistakea and grammatical crrbrs.

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the national level or whether you are here from local law enforcement, the rights of the people, the peace and the freedom that must be preserved must be preserved not only in the local community from the lawbreaker but also on the international scene. So you have this in common. As a matter of fact, at any level of government I have always subscribed to a belief that protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing. In the context, some days ago I used a term and answered a question from a member of the press using the word bayonets and it caused a certain reaction among a number of people. I will admit that the manner in which it was reported was somewhat distorted-probably because the question was asked and answered at a noisy airport without the ability to exchange views and the wind of this in depth. It was done in the contact of keeping our campuses open at the point of bayonets, if necessary, and I will admit that this does bring a somewhat harsh picture to mind. Actually, the context in which I used it, I would re-affirm; because I used it in the context of government's responsibility to protect the people. And in answer to the question "was there any limit to the force that government should use in the protection of the individual?" I used the illustration of saying, "no, that government was obliged, at the point of bayonet, if necessary, to preserve these rights." Now, I want you to know your gathering here that not only do I mean that, but whatever more, or additional, that the State Government can do, and this Administration can to provide cooperation in what I believe is the most pressing task confronting us on the domestic scene today, the most immediate task, the preservation of the rights of the individual to feel free·and safe in his own neighborhood, on his city streets and in his home-this is the problem that must be solved and must be met. Now I know that you here are going to hear later today something about our 24-hour around-the-clock State operation; so I won't go into detail about that in my few remarks. But you will find out of course-some of you already know-that not only in this procedure we have this kind of cooperation but that we have a single number that can be called in the event of an emergency that will automatically alert every agency of the State Government that could possibly be concerned or involved. In the meantime you are all familiar with the program of Mutual Aid and the State is grateful for this. It has provided that the sacrifice of local State, local enforcement agencies, local resources are very often extended to their very limit and then Mutual Aid extends to the State and bringing in of the Guard, if required. But as I say this will be discussed later this afternoon. But let me just say in that context in making this Mutual Aid work-1 believe that local law enforcement in California is without an equal any place in the world. I think we have the finest local law enforcement in the State of California by enlarge (sic] and with few exceptions that can be found in any part of the world today. And for the most part, in our cities, local law enforcement is doing the job magnificently and in the face of fearful odds. Now we need more and here too, I believe, there is more that the State can do. I think that there is a moral persuasive power to government, to my office and to the State Administration and I think that we should use that power to bring about the other addition that is needed to help you and that is a

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kind of moral resurgence on the pan of the people. A return to the kind of philosophy in this February season that caused an Abraham Lincoln to be known in the copy books for walking several miles at the end of his days [sic] work to return a few pennys that he had mistakenly overcharged a customer. The kind of moral resurgence that will even go into the home and the things that are taken as commonplace today.ln the event of the motor accident, the getting additional repairs because it only comes off the insurance company and they can afford it. The little bit of cheating that goes on with regard to the expense account, on the playing field, the idea the youngster that finds himself encouraged to do something as long as the referee can't see it. We need the mind of memorial resurgence that was responsible a few years ago for, I think, one of the most unusual incidents in a college football game that I have ever heard of-and yet it should be commonplace. I don't know how many of you know of this but TCU was playing Oklahoma when Bud Wilkinson's teams were the surge of the nation and held the National Championship and in the dosing minutes of the fourth quaner a TCU end made a diving catch of a pass in the end zone for what looked to be the winning touchdown over the National Champions. The stadium was going wild, the TCU pass receiver stood up, walked over to the officials and said, "no, the ball touched the ground before I caught it." Now most coaches [sic] today first instinct would be-tum in your suit. It just happens that at TCU they are taught that way and I think it should be more widespread-it's an indication to me of the things we need. It begins with those who are so obsessed today, perhaps rightly so, with the need for social reform that they have gone beyond to the point of encouraging civil disobedience-suggesting amnesty for those who have broken the law and created disorders. That they must recognize that the ending of the social ills, the treating of the problems of human misery and poveny and want are noble in themselves are in a long range category and aU of us are involved and have a sacred obligation to carry them out. But they can not, at the same rime, result in this postponing the immediate enforcement of the Jaw. The immediate problem that confronts us now that you can not have even civil disobedience without infringing on the rights of others. Now, let me turn for a second to the campus idea and where it figures in and here again is some of what I believe is "fuzzy" thinking. A group of students presents some demands-now some of those demands have merit. Indeed some of them in many cases in our own State have been a pan of the existing coUege plans [that] have been going forward in the academic circles. Some of their demands are presumptuous, unwise and impossible to fuJifiJl (sic]. But once they have presented the demands and then taken to the streets as we have seen them do, as for example, at San Francisco State or Berkeley. Those demands, regardless of how just some of them may be, cease to be the issue when those students threatened to use force unless their demands are met. When they tum to the rock and club and the firebomb and the physical beating of feUow students and faculty members, destruction and vandalism of property as a means to their end-then that becomes the only issue-the only issue that must be resolved and yet we have drifted so far in our basic values, from our basic values and the fundamental issue there is that the orderly processes of education cannot go

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forward under a threat of coherence. To do so, is to commit the fatal mistake one makes when he makes the first payment to the blackmailer. Their demands if presented as proposals can be discussed, dissected and debated-but not so long as they are ultimatums on a fight or surrender basis. And so it is with crime, we do our utmost to solve the problems of human misery that perhaps underlay and bring about and cause some of the crime. But at the same time we cannot tolerate for one minute those who, because of their frustrations, take the law into their own hands. A few days ago, a not to [sic) pleasanttask and a thing I would hope to be avoided, I reached a point with regard to one of our campuses at Berkeley. For a long time I have hoped that academic forces, administration of our educational institutions coupled with law enforcement would take emergency measures to cope with the problem of the dissident outside and on the campus. Somehow this never quite came about. You were saddled the task-those of you who come from college towns and university communities. Saddled with the task of being called in after the disorder started, trying to arrest those that you could find that were responsible, try to get the evidence that would make a charge of battery and assault and vandalism stand up and the next day called back again until you have exhausted your resources. You have used up all the overtime that you could possibly have with your local law enforcement. And so we took the action of calling a State of Emergency on the campus at Berkeley. By calling State of Emergency we were able, with the use of the Highway Patrol, to put the forces on the campus in advance of the trouble to prevent the trouble from starting. And just on the way here I was handed a bulletin that was torn off the Associated Press Wire and it reads; For the first time since last month, early classes at the University of California at Berkeley got underway today without any pickets outside. About 50 Highway Patrol are stationed in a garage on the campus and one squad of Sheriffs Deputies are near by. The presence of Ia w enforcement there in advance of the problem has evidently brought the order that we have been seeking for a long time. Therefore, as harsh as it may sound, I will tell you-that whatever, from now on a situation arises similar to the one at Berkeley that prompted this action, there will be no delay in declaring a State of Emergency on that campus wherever it may be to bring about the same results. As I say you are gathered here-I know the purpose of your meeting-to further the kinds of plans that we have started to make sure that the process is the six thousand year history of man of pushing the jungle back creating .a clearing where men can live in peace and go about their business with some measure of safety for themselves and their family; you are on the firing line for that as the local level and at the international level. I commend you for it and again pledge you the all out support that we can give you in achieving your purpose because of late the jungle has been creeping in again a little closer to our boundaries. The boundaries of those clearings that man has created over these centuries and these thousands of years and so I wish you God speed and great success in the meetings that will take place and have taken place so far-the orientation for the program you are putting together. Again, thank you very much.

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Document2 Gram Metric Cable SpliterZ The exercise will simulate simultaneous multiple civil disturbances involving widespread rioting, arson, and looting in approximately 15 selected cities within the CONUS [Continental United States). The Revolutionary Liberty Front (RLF), a radical organization advocating and practicing violence, acts as a catalyst in expanding the civil disturbances. These simulated disturbances will develop to the degree that the National Guard is either alerted or called to State or Federal d~ty in alliS cities, and Federal military assistance will be requested in up to 12 cities. The requests for Federal assistance will include requests for loans of DOD equipment in most of these 12 cities, and requests for Federal military forces in up to six cities. In response to these requests, there will be simulated deployment ofFederal military forces in up to six cities and simulated employment in up to three cities. PURPOSE OF THE EXERCISE. To exercise key personnel, relationships and plans and procedures applicable in civil disturbance operations involving DOJ, DA, DN, OAF, USMC, MTMTS, USASTRATCOM, USAMC, USAINTC ... USCONARC,CONUSArmies, MDW, 3 District of Colombia, designated task forces and support installations under simulated deteriorating domestic conditions which culminate in deployment of multiple Federal military task forces. Specific objectives are to exercise key personnel, plans, and procedures in the following areas: (a) Deployment of employment of GARDEN PLOT forces (to include Quick-Reaction Forces) within CONUS •. .loans to civil, National Guard, and Federal agencies by exercising support installation capabilities and loans of prepositioned civil disturbance supplies •.. designation and simulated deployment of the personalliason officer of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army (PLOCSA), and the Department of the Army Liason Team (DALT) ... (and) liason with civil authorities •.. S(B) Information ( 1) No voluntary rel~ses, national or local, will be made on the CPX. (2) Responses should be made at the lowest practical level to direct inquiries only. Responses will be limited to a statement of purpose of the CPX-"This routine civil disturbance Command Post Exercise is being conducted to exercise the existing contingency plans and procedures. Command, staff, and communications personnel will be the primary participants. No troop unit movements from home stations will be involved."

••• J Source: Cormtmpy, Vol. 2, Issue 4 (Winter 1976), p. 57 J Initials represent in order the Department of justice, Department of Anny,

Department of Navy, Department of Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, Military Tnffic Management and Tennina.l Service, U.S. Anny Stntegic Communications Command, U.S. Anny Material Command, U.S. Anny Intelligence Command ••• U.S. Continental Anny Command, Continental U.S. Anniea, Military District of Washington.

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Commentary by Counterspy: The tone for GRAM METRIC can be judged from the game plan scenario. In all, "coordinated violence" occurs in 25 cities and stems form such diverse situations as a strike in Tacoma, a boxing match in New York City, a rock concert in Orlando, a sit-in in Sacramento, and the shooting of a civil rights leader in Washington, D.C. In the 24 hours prior to the official beginning of the CPX, the scenario called for 696 fires, 50 shootings, and 134 incidents oflooting in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit alone. CPXes were not limited to the federal level, however. In order to coordinate federal and local response and resources, CPXes have been held on the state and regional level since OPLAN GARDEN PLOT was established. Interviews with Pentagon officials show that such CPXes are considered routine and have been conducted in every state of the Union. Investigative reporter Ron Ridenhour of New Times obtained copies of the regional war games held in the 6th U.S. Army area, the states of California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. These war games, called CABLE SPLICER, borrowed the GRAM METRIC concept of management preparation and carried it to the local level. CABLE SPLICER even involved officials of major corporations. Present at the CABLE SPLICER Ill (1970) after-action conference were: representatives from 13 state National Guard Commands; active duty military officials from the 6th U.S. Army; officials from the Department of justice, the FBI, the Secret Service; the Selective Service, U.S. Army Intelligence command, Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, the Bank of America, Lockheed, Boeing, Sylvania, Pacific Gas and Electric, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, Standard Oil of California, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, SCM, Dictaphone, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., and several University of California officials. This excerpt, from the CABLE SPLICER documents obtained by Ridenhour, gives an indication of the matters discussed at the after-action conference: (1) General. The problem was designed to exercise two task force headquarters with four task forces conducting operations in four major cities or Oregon. Each player unit received background information initially as an intelligence summary covering the period preceding the exercise. A deteriorating situation was then progressively developed for each locale through a series of prepared messages. Each task force operated on the basis of actual assigned strength and equipment on hand during the actual exercise period. The exercise general situation developed a simulated gradual increase in lawlessness and disorder on the Pacific Coast during the spring months of 1970. Three new simulated radical leftist organizations (the Scholars Democratic League [SDL], on the campuses; the International Brotherhood of Labor Reform

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[IBLF] among the blue collar workers; and the International Fraternity of Progress of Non-Caucasian [IFPC] among the minority groups), created confrontations at the universities and high schools as well as within the major cities. The situation continued to deteriorate until 0700 hours, 24 April 70. Then the Governor of the State of Oregon issued a proclamation of a state of emergency and directed the Adjutant General, Oregon, to assist civil authorities in the restoration of law and order. At the stan of the exercise play at 0730 hours, 25 April, player units had been called to state active duty and had assembled and moved to assembly areas in problem cities (simulated) ••. play was advanced 48 hours and players were informed that the National Guard was called to federal service and assistance of federal troops had been requested (simulated). For duration of the CPX players planned actions required on being mobilized .•. Sixth U.S. Army Final Report CPX Cable Splicer Ill Section III, Field Operations pages 11-12 "For Official Use Only"

Document3 Revolutitnuzry Peoples' Constitutional Convention September 1970, Philadelphi4

WORKSHOP ON INTERNATIONAUSM AND RELATIONS WITH LIBERATION STRUGGLES AROUND THE WORLD The Revolutionary Peoples' Constitutional Convention supports the demand of the Chinese people for the liberation of Taiwan. We demand the liberation of Okinawa and the Pacific Territories occupied by U.S. and European imperialist countries. The Revolutionary Peoples' Constitutional Convention supports the struggles and endorses the government of the provisional revolutionary government of South Vietnam, the royal government of National Union of Cambodia, and the Pathet Lao. Huey P. Newton Minister of Defense Black Panther Party In order to insure our international constitution, we, the people of Babylon, declare an international bill of rights: that all people are guarnteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that all people of the world be free from dehumanization and intervention in their internal affairs by a foreign power. Therefore, if fascist actions in the world attempt to achieve imperialist goals, they will be in violation of the law and dealt with as criminals.

266


We are in full support with the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation of Palestine from Zionist colonialism, and their goals of creating a democratic state where all Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Moslems are equal. We propose solidarity with the liberation struggle of the Puerto Rican people, who now exist as a colony of the United States and have many groups who are fighting for liberation, such as C.A.L. (Armed Commandos for Liberation), M.I.R.A. and the Young Lords Party. We propose that, whereas the universities in the United States are used by the imperialist system to provide the knowledge that that system uses to perpetrate the exploitation of the Third World and repression against national liberation struggles, we propose that the universities and their resources be turned over to use for, by, and of the peoples of the world so that they may implement their vision of a new socialist world.

I.

The United States is an international federation of bandits and we denounce its rights to nationhood.

2.

We should provoke the destruction of all racists and fascists in capitalistic countries and the world over. We should not rest until all of them are wiped off the face of the earth.

3.

We support all liberation struggles throughout the world and we oppose all reactionary struggles throughout the world.

4.

Our constitution will guarantee the right of all people to travel and communicate with all peoples throughout the world.

5.

We stand resolute in our unrelenting convictions to destroy Pig Amerikka.

6.

Wherever the word "men" appears it should be replaced with the word "people" to express solidarity with the self-determination of women and to do away with all remnants of male supremacy, once and for all.

7.

We propose that we declare a just peoples' war against capitalism and remain in that state until capitalism is abolished from the face of the Earth.

8.

We should have an organization or army to defend the kidnapping and terror of pigs as a means of freeing political prisoners of war.

9.

We oppose such organizations as NATO and SEATO and all lackeys of U.S. imperialism.

10.

We damand immediate withdrawal of all American forces around the world.

11.

Reparations should be made to oppressed people throughout the world, and we pledge ourself to take the wealth of this country and make it available as reparations.

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12.

We will not allow or accept this country going into other countries and utilizing their wealth.

13.

We will administer all foreign aid given by the U.S. by an international body composed of representatives from revolutionary peoples.

14.

We will use our more advanced revolutionary brothers and sisters to better the struggle.

15.

We demand an end to the genocide caused by sterilization programs in different forms-nationally and international. All Power to the People

SELF-DETERMINATION OF STREET PEOPLE What we want: We want an immediate end to the crimes of pimping, prostitution, number rackets, gambling, dope pushing, fencing, loansharking, sexism, rape, theft, pick pockets, bribery, extortion, union corruption, etc., committed on the people by organized crime syndicates which work hand in hand with the pig power structure and those lackeys within our communities who refuse to deal with these problems. 1.

Creation of investigative councils run by the people.

2.

Encourage informers to tum over information to these councils.

3.

Remove by force those elements which have been exposed.

4.

Confiscation or destruction of property controlled by organized crimf\ syndicates.

5.

The encouragement of all progressive forces and elements to change corruption in government and enforce revolutionary justice.

EducationAll people will be provided with the kind of schooling they desire and need. All levels of schooling will be provided free by the government. Schooling must be non-compulsory. The community will control the schools, education, curriculum, and educators. Education must be part and parcel of the political realities of the time. Education must always serve the people by teaching the true natute of this decadent society.

DopeWe recognize that hard drugs (smack, speed, etc.) are counterrevolutionary, sapping the strength of the people in their struggle. This problem must be dealt with on two levels. The seller of hard drugs must be eradicated from the community by any means necessary. The user must be helped to rid

268


himself of addiction by the people. We urge setting up of a People's Rehabilitation Center by the people. We recognize that psychedelic drugs (acid, mescaline, grass) are important in developing the revolutionary consciousness of the people. However, after the revolutionary consciousness has been achieved, these drugs rna y become a burden. No revolutionary action should be attempted while under the influence of any drug. We urge that these drugs be made legal. Or rather than they should not be illegal, that is, there should be no law made against them.

LandWe hold that private property is theft. We demand that the use of parks, streets, rural areas, and unused land to carry on our revolutionary struggle for survival. We will seize the land we need by any means necessary. Streets and urban parks must be liberated to be used for people's needs such as: 1) mass meetings, 2) concerts and recreation, 3) sleeping area, and other everyday activities. Rural land and large state parks must be liberated to be used for: military training in the techniques of self defense and urban guerilla warfare in order to fight a war of liberation, and land to be used for farming and other productive needs.

GrievanceAll private rural land has been stolen from the people. It originally belonged to the people. It is being used for capitalistic goals and is being destroyed ecologically.

Food, Housing, Oothing, HealthWe demand the right for all people to have free food, housing, free clothing, free medical care and all other rights established by the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention. Recognizing our responsibility as revolutionary street people in this period of transition-

!.

We call for free de-centralized medical care and the availability of medical information (curative and preventive) for all the people in the neighborhood to meet the daily situations in a revolutionary manner.

2.

We call for the establishment of free inter-relative community food cooperatives to collect, exchange, store, distribute and provide food and cooking facilities for the community needs.

3.

We demand community control of the means of production of clothing and adequate sharing and distributing of clothing to meet the needs of the people.

4.

We demand the replacement of deteriorated housing with the construction of adequate low-income housing which is available for those people whose housing is replaced and the control of community removal programs by the people in those communities.

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Finally, we call for the formation of Revolutionary People's Community Councils to be responsible for the implementation of all collective needs of the community.

WORKSHOP ON THE SELF DETERMINATION OF WOMEN -We recognize the right of all women to be free. -As women, we recognize that our struggle is against a racist, capitalist, sexist system that oppresses all minority peoples. -This capitalistic country is run by a small ruling class who use the ideas and practices of chauvinism and racism to devide, control and oppress the masses of people for their own greedy ~ins and profit. -We want equal Status in a society that does not exploit or murder other people. -We will fight for a socialist system that guarantees full, creative, nonexploitive life for all human beings. -We will not be free until all oppressed people are free.

FamilyWhereas in a capitalist culture, the institution of the family has been used as an economic tool or instrument, not serving the needs of the people. We declare that we will not relate to the private ownership of people. We encourage and suppon the continued growth of communal households and communal relationships and other alternatives to the patriarchal family. We call for socialization of housework and child care with the sharing of work by men and women. Women must have the right to decide when and if we want to have chi,ldren. There should be free and safe binh control, including abonion, available upon demand. There should be no forced sterilization or mandatory binh control programs which are now used as genocide against third world sisters and against poor people. Every women has the right to decide whether she will be homosexual, hetrosexual or bisexual.

EmploymentWhereas women in a class society have been continuously exploited, through their work, both in their home and outside their home, we call for: 1.

guaranteed full, equal and non-exploitive employment, controlled collectively by the working people.

2.

Guaranteed adequate income for all. This would entail the sharing of necessary, non-creative tasks and the maximum utilization of revolutionary technology to eliminate these tasks.

270


3.

An end to the sexism which forces women into the lowest paying service jobs and the racism that insures that third world women will be the lowest payed of all.

4.

Guaranteed payed maternity leave.

EducationWhereas women historically have been deprived of education, or only partially educated and mis-educated in those areas deemed appropriate for us by those ruling powers who would benefit by our ignorance; we call for: 1.

the right to determine our own goals.

2.

The end of sex roles regarding training or skills.

3.

Self-knowledge: the history of women, our relation to society and the knowledge of our bodies.

4.

Guaranteed technological and professional training and in the interim, special programs should be set up in every feild in which women have been denied equality, such as child care.

5.

Men to be trained in those areas in which they have been denied equality, such as child care.

6.

Control of non-authoritarian education by the people it serves in the language and culteral style of the people.

ServicesWhereas the services provided for the people have been inadequate, unavailable or too expensive, administered in a racist and sexist manner, we declare that: 1.

AU services-health care, housing, food, clothing, transportation and education-should be controlled by the people: and should be free.

2.

Services for women should be controlled by the women of the community which they serve.

MediaThe mass media is not permitted to exploit women's bodies in order to sell or promote products. Women mdst be treated with respect and dignity at all times by the peoples' media. The peoples' media will work to eliminate sexist terminology: he, man, mankind; when we mean person, people, humanity.

Self DefenseWhereas the struggle of the people must be borne equally by all the people fighting for their liberation, we declare that women have the right to bear arms. Women should be fully trained and educated in the art of self-defense and the defense of the peoples' nation. We recognize that it is our duty to defend all oppressed people.

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Women in Our Own RightWhereas we do not beleive that any person is the propeny of any other person, we declare that women have the right to bear their own surnames, not names determined by their husbands or fathers. We demand that all organizations, ranging from health insurance to social security to banks, deal with women in our own right as people, rather than as the propeny of men.

Equal Participation in GovernmentWhereas all revolutionary people must share equally in the decisions which effect them, we are dedicated to the national salvation of all humanity. All Power to the People!!

STATEMENT OF DEMANDS FROM THE MALE REPRESENTATIVES OF NATIONAL GAY LIBERATION We Demand:

1.

The right to be gay anytime, anyplace.

2.

The right to free physiological change and modification of sex upon demand.

3.

The right of free dress and adornment.

4.

That all modes of human sexual self-expression deserve protection of the law and social sanction.

5.

Every child's right to develop in a non-sexist, non-possessive atmosphere, which is the responsibility of all people to create.

6.

That a free educational system present the entire range of human sexuality, without advocating any fonn or style ••. that sex roles and sex determined skills not be fostered by the schools.

7.

That language be modified so that no gender takes priority.

8.

That the judicial system be run by the people through people's couns and that all people be tried by members of their peer group.

9.

That gays be represented in all governmental and community institutions.

10.

That organized religions be condemmed for aiding in the genocide of gay people, and enjoined from teaching hatred and superstition.

11.

That psychiatry and psychology be enjoined from advocating a preference for any form of sexuality, and the enforcement of that preference by shock treatment, brainwashing, imprisonment, etc.

12.

The abolition of the necular family because it perpetuates the false categories of homosexuality and hetrosexuality.

272


13. The immediate release of and reparations for gay political prisoners from prisons and mental institutions; the suppon of gay political prisoners by all other political prisoners. 14.

That gays determine the destiny of their own communities.

15.

That all people share equally the labor and products of society, regardless of sex or sexual orientation.

16.

That technology be used to liberate all peoples of the world from drudgery.

17.

The full participation of gays in the Peoples' Revolutionary Army .

.18.

Finally, the end of domination of one person by another. Gay Power to Gay People All Power to the People Seize the Time

WORKSHOP: THE FAMILY AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN I.

The discussion was not truly representative of all oppressed groups, since, for example, there were no children present.

2.

Some people felt that the traditional family was so oppressive that it must be abolished and replaced by a different family grouping. Others felt that there were positive things in the traditional family that should be perpetuated in the new world. It was also pointed out that we can't predict what the traditional family might be like under socialism.

3.

It was agreed that children are not possessions and are not to be treated as possessions by parents, collectives or the state.

4.

General agreement was that children are entitled to the broadest possible education.

5.

Children are entitled to be brought up to have the greatest trust, confidence and sense of sharing with the other people in their society.

6.

The responsibility for creating those conditions that would enable a chif'd to be a whole human being rests with all of us.

7.

We agreed that children's feelings and viewpoints should be respected.

8.

It was agreed that children have the right to be breast fed.

9.

A child must be reared to be sexually free and have his choices respected.

10.

Children are essential to adults as teachers because children naturally resist oppression.

II.

Children must be loved in a truly revolutionary manner. Children are people. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!

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273

USE OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM AND POUTICAL PRISONERS OF WAR The present judicial system in the United States is nothing more than an instrument and tool of class rule, representing the will of the racist ruling class made into a-law for everyone. The laws themselves and the procedural aspect; such as bail, cater to the customs and mores of the ruling class. At this ·time, in the transitional stage prior to the post revolutionary society, the call for peoples' revolutionary tribunes will be made. The function of these tribunals will be as the peoples' tribunals for revolutionaries who might be at the same time, on trial in the existing legal system of the ruling class. These tribunals will be decentralized and arise out of the area where the incidents or alleged crimes themselves took place. While the struggle is still being waged, the people must learn to manipulate and utilize the existing court system, through political trials, in order to develope a revolutionary political consciousness and illustrate the true nature of this corrupt legal system before the people. The courts should serve the people and in this racist society that can only be done by a jury of one's peers. Understanding of the laws is a matter of interpretation which directly reflects one's social, economic and racial background. So if one is to be judged, he must be judged by a jury of his peers instead of by those with the standards and ideas of the racist ruling class. If we are to talk of creating a legal system that has its foundation in man's human nature, we must talk of transforming the entire society. Therefor it becomes necessary to define for ourselves what is criminal. Therefor: Principles are the foundation by which the will of the people is .insured. And if we are to talk of legality, criminals and crime, we must first talk of the ultimate crime. That is the crime of exploitation of man by man and the legal system that endorses and upholds it. Since exploitation deprives people of the necessities oflife and the fruits of their labor, it is the supreme crime and the exploiters are the supreme criminals. We feel that all of the natural recourses of the earth belongs to, an and any exploitation, usurpation of man•s labors and of the natural resources of the earth is an attack on man's survival and a crime. Any lack of action that denies human beings their right to exist are crimes against the people. Therefore, if the people are to control their destiny and thereby assure their own survival, then we must have a legal system that insures the abolishment of all forms of exploitation. We recognize the armed body of the state, the fascist police force, is the protector and perpetrator of criminal acts and crimes. Not because the police per se are criminal by nature or criminal men, but because the function of the police and the armed forces in a capitalist society is criminal by nature. So we feel that the police should come from the community in which they live and that there should be no distinction between the people and the police because of their function. Every man was born and therefore he has a right to live, a right to share in the wealth. If he is denied the rightto work then he is denied the rightto live. If

274


he can't work, he deserves a high standaro of living, regardlessofhis education or skill. It should be up to the administrators of the economic system to design a program for providing work or a livlihood for the people. To deny him this is to deny him life. Because the present constitution in words guarantees us the right to live, in practice we are denied this most basic human right, we list the following guidelines as essential to our continued survival and prosperity:

l.

All juries must consist of one's peers.

2.

All couns should be peoples' couns.

3.

All decisions of the people should be implemented in a collective manner by the people.

4.

No judge, no policeman, n~ advocate should serve more than one year in any position of administrative trust without being reviewed by the people.

These guidelines, we, the people feel, are the best pre-requisites needed to insure a just and humane system.

Rights of Oppressed People and Political Prisoners1.

Because of the genocidal acts of the government of the United States, against the people of this country and the world: Oppressed people (any class, ethnic group or social group that has its rights restricted by any means by any other group) have an absolute right and responsibility to defend themselves by any means necessary and effective against all forms of aggression, whether this aggression be by a direct act of violence or by the violation of their human rights, among which are the rights to food, clothing, shelter, adequate medical care, education and the inalienable right to self determination.

2.

The people have not only the right to self-defense by any means necessary, but also the right to organize against all oppression and exploitation, to alter or abolish all existing legal structures, and to reorganize the society for the benefit of alJ the people.

3.

Because the legal system of the U.S. exists to serve the ruling class and facilitate oppression and exploitation of the people, those people that are held in jails and prisons have not necessarily been incarcerated for crimes against the people; that therefore prisoners be returned to their communities for trial by the peoples' court under a revolutionary process. That all charges be dropped against the peoples' leaders that they can return to leadership of their communities from jail and from exile because they have not committed any crimes against the people •.• Bobby Seale, the Conn. 9, N.Y. 21, L.A. 18, Angela Davis, Soledad Brothers, Ahmed Evans, Manin Sostre. We say that while held, all political prisoners of war must be treated under international agreements regarding humane treatment.

all

4.

Appendix

27S

CONTROL AND USE OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 1.

Liberation schools set up for pre-school age children.

2.

Entering school with a political consciousness.

3.

Community control of schools: a. Parents controlling curriculum b. Community elected board officers c. Power to hire and fire teachers belongs to community elected board.

4.

IntellectUal and cultural education shall be available to all persons: a. Education will deal with the means of survival of the various portions of society b. Education for students will deal with the student as an individual c. The workings of the system or political education should be taught for constant political consciousness d. Schools and institutions will be free and make advanced study available to any person e. The schools will encourage all persons to expand and realize their creative aspirations. it will especially encourage study in socialist society, human survival, and the truth and workings of the present society.

Student's Rights1.

Students in any school will have the right of freedom of speech, dress and assembly

2.

Student government should be controlled by the students a. No rules set up for who runs for office, ex., grades, conduct, politics, paniciparion in other actives b. Student controlled press (paper), student board to decide what goes in paper and what does not go into it c. Freedom to assembly whenever problems arise that the students feel should be solved collectively on a face to face basis d. Student activities not mandatory e. Assemblies left to student decision in accordance with what they feel should be solved relevant to those things that direct1y relate to them f. No guards in schools for any reason. Community and students will deal with all problems, major and minor g. Stude~ts decide their courses according to what they want and think they need. No set curriculum. Courses will be fit to students, not students to the courses. h. New grading system established.

276


We the people believe that education should serve the people. It should expose the true nature of this society. Education should assist in teaching us our socialist ideas, and stand as a basis for our socialist practice. The power of education should and will belong in the hands of the people. We believe that educa~ion plays a major role in this system of programming. So we the people must penetrate and seize this tool of the power structure and turn it into a weapon to be used against it. All Power to the People

WORKSHOP: CONTROL & USE OF MILITARY AND POLICE

Proposals on the Militaryf.

National defense shall be provided by a system of peoples' militia, trained in guerilla warfare, on a voluntary basis and consisti~ of both men and women.

2.

The U.S. shall not maintain a standing army, since historically a standing army has been used for offensive actions against the people of the United States and around the world.

3.

No genocidal weapons shall be manufactured or used.

4.

All presently existing offensive equipment and installations shall be made inoperable and unservicable for its original purpose.

5.

The people shall be educated and informed on the action of the militia, and all records shall be open to the public.

6.

The government shall be prohibited from sending any personnel, funds, or equipment to any nation for military or police purposes.lt should also be prohibited from spending more than I 0% of the national budget for any military or police purposes. This can be overriden by a majority vote in a national referendum.

7.

No person shall serve full-time in the militia; those serving in the militia shall be paid a fair wage.

8.

Militia members shall be governed by the laws of the community in which they serve (or governed by the laws of the nation??)

9.

National defense shall be provided by a system of peoples' militias.

I 0.

There shall be no conscription for any armed forces.

II.

No peoples' militia shall be stationed outside national boundaries.

12.

Government people and military personnel should be defined as one and the same, and not as separate entities in or of the power structure.

13. The people shall have the right to bear arms. a. No citizen shall be prohibited the possession, control or purchase of small arms without the due process of law. b. Free programs shall be set up in the training and use of small arms.

Appendix

277

Organization, Use of, and Control of the Police1. The police force shall be a rotating volunteer non-professional body coordinated by the Police Control Board from a (weekly) list of volunteers from each community section. The Police Control Board, its policies, as well as the police leadership,shall be chosen by direct popular majority vote of the community. 2.

There shall not be set up, or permitted to exist, a national body of police, or secret body of police, nor shall on-uniformed police be permitted to exist.

3.

Any citizen can bring charges against any member or officer of the police force before the Control Board, and the Control Board shall have the power to relieve that member or officer of the police force of his or her duty.

4.

Community Police Councils may set up working relations and exchange information with police forces in other communities.

5.

The purpose of the people's police force shall be to serve and protect the community.

6.

No person can serve on both the police force and the Control Board at the same time.

7.

Any member of the Control Board can be removed by direct, popular vote of the people.

8.

Funds for community police and for the community's Control Board shall be provided for by national government under direction of the local Control Board.

HEALTH Health care is a right, not a priviledge. We say that comprehensive medical care should not be sold as a commodity by a class of exploiters, interested in profit only. We recognize this profit motive is the outgrowth of a capitalist system which thrives on the exploitation of people and divides them on racist, sexist and class lines. Our solution is to make all aspects of health care meet the demands of all people through prevention, education and community control of health services. 1.

Prevention (health checkups) a. nutrition (educating people with regard to eating the right diets) b. Maternal and child care to put an end to: 1. genocide 2. experimentation in the hospitals of oppressed people 3. experimentation in the public school system as a so-called mental health program 4. exploitation of children's behavior; children are given tranquilizers and put in a category as threats to the capitalist system.

278


c. Senior citizens services (the right to be able to work as long as they can function) d. Regular examinations for all people e. Better detection facilities {more emphasis should be placed on diseases that are more prevalent in minority group areas, e.g. sickle cell anemia) f. Medical teams should be sent out into the communities to seek out diseases and illnesses. 2.

Education a. health education of the masses (symptoms of diseases in the home, first aid in the home) b. training and retraining of present health workers c. ending professionalism {titles, etc.) d. open admissions to all who want medical training

3.

Community Control a. right of self determination to have children (not to be told by the capitalist system how many to have) b. right to adequate economic means c. community boards should run all medical institutions

4.

Mental Health We consider mental health to include both physical and mental well being. We recognize that much of the mental illness in our society is caused by the oppression of the capitalist system where psychiatry is used as a tool of fascism. It has also been used against homosexuals. We are opposed to the medical industrial complex of medicine. We believe in socialized medicine. Inherent in this concept is prevention and free comprehensive, community controlled medicine. The only way to socialize medicine is through revolution.

REVOLUTIONARY ART The workshop on the Revolutionary Arts and Artists hereby submits the following declaration to the Plenary Session of the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention: We Recognize: 1. That all people are born with a creative potential and that the society must guarantee that every person has the opportunity to develop and express that potential. 2.

That art is a creative expression of a people's culture or way of life.

3.

We recognize the right of every people's culture to its form of expression and that those forms of expressions should be preserved, encouraged and developed.

Appendix

4.

279

We recognize that an should be related to the interest, needs and aspirations of the people.

NOTES Chapter One: The New Left as a World-Historical Movement _ __ 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

1.

8.

Eric Hobsbawm, "1968-A Retrospect," in Marxism Today (May 1978), p. 130. As quoted in john Hersey, "1968: The Year of the Triphammer," Stm Diego Union, October 22, 1978, p. C-8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Re'Volutions (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 23, 286-8. Aristide R. Zolberg, "Moments of Madness" in Politics and Society (Winter 1972), pp. 183-207. Karl Marx, The 18th Bru7114ireof Louis Napoleon (International Publishers, 1912), p. 15. Zolberg, op. cit., p. 184. What the student movement expressed in the slogan, "L 'i7114gination au pouwir, "originally came to France from Vietnam. See jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism tmd Marxism (Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1979), p. 125. See Karl Marx, The Gnm4n Ideology (International Publishers, 1973 ), p.

56. 9. 10. II. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince (International Publishers, 1972), pp. 165-6. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Re'Volution (Beacon Press, 1960), p. 141. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History (Colonial Press, 1899), p. 56. Marcuse, op. tit. Hegel, op. tit.,, pp. 108, 343. Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike (Harper and Row, 1971 ), pp. 44-5. (Emphasis in the original.) G. Sorel, Reflections on Violence (Collier Books, 1950), pp. 127-8. 281

282

16.

.

17 . 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.


Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of /848: A Social History (Princeton University Press, 1952), pp. 221, 269,274, 289, 291, 300, 304, 391; Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848-9 (International Publishers, 1972), pp. 108-9, 262; Sidney Harcave, The Russian Revolution of 1905 (Macmillan, 1964), p. 203. Alfred Willener, The Action-Image of Society: On Cultural Politicization (Pantheon Books, 1970), p. 93. The Commune of 1871 (New York Labor News, 1978), p. 7. See Chapter 6 for further discussion of this concept. Rosa Luxemburg, op. cit., p. 36. Thomas jefferson, Letter to john Adams, September 4, 1823. Andre Gunder Frank, Crisis: In the Third World (Holmes and Meier, 1981 ). Alexis de Tocqueville, Souvenirs d'Aiexis de Tocqueville (Gallimard, 1942), p. 30. Priscilla Robertson, op. cit., p. 81. L. S. Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age (William Morrow and Company, 1981), p. 389. See Rosa Luxemburg, Theory and Practice (News and Letters, 1980), p. 45; Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais, Labor's Untold Story (UE Press, 1974), pp. 142-164. Azar Tabari and Nabid Yaganeh, In the Shadow of Islam (Zed Press, 1982), p. 30. Harcave, op. cit., p. 133. Max Gordon, "The Communist Party and The New Left," Socialist Revolution (january 1976), p. 19. Klaus Mehnert, Moscow and the New Left (University of California Press, 1975), pp. 41-2. Valda Spini, "The New Left in Italy," Journal of Contemporary History (january-April 1972), pp. 51-71. Mihailo Markovic, "The New Left and the Cultural Revolution," in The Contemporary Marx (Spokesman Books, 1974), p. 175. D. Rousopoulos, Canada and Radical Social Change (Black Rose Books, 1973), pp. 51, 183. Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Beacon Press, 1972). Also see Chapter 5 of this book for further discussion. Herbert Marcuse, "Reexamination of the Concept of Revolution," Diogenes, No. 64 (Winter 1968), pp. 17-27. Earl Hutchinson, "Misunderstood Legacy of King," Guardian, January 17, 1987, pp. 1, 19. See Willener, op. cit., for a book-length study of this insight. Wilfred Burchett, Vietnam Will Win! (International Publishers, 1968). Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1968), p. 136. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1974). United States Office of Education, Projections of Educational Statistics to U77-1978 (Government Printing Office, 1968).

Notes

283

42. James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1976).

Chapter Two: Social Movements of 1 9 6 8 - - - - - - - - - - 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

Liz Hodgkin, "People's War Comes to the Towns: Tet 1968," Marxism Today (May 1978), pp. 147-152. Don Oberdorfer, Tet (Avon Books, 1972). Hodgkin, op. cit., p. 147. See "Historic Victory in Indochina," Monthly Review (May 197 5), pp. 1-13; Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The Washington Connection ond Third World Fascism (South End Press, 1979), pp. 345-54. See John Hersey, "1968: The Year of the Triphammer," San Diego Union, October 22, 1978. See Daniel Ellsberg's Introduction to Protest and Survive (Monthly Review Press, 1981 ); Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, To Win 11 Nuclear War (South End Press, 1987). Interview with Noam Chomsky, Indochina Newsletter (NovemberDecember, 1982), p. 4. Oberdorfer, op. cit., pp. 289-90. Fran~ is Houtart and Andre Rosseau, The Church and Revolution (Orbis Books, 1971), p. 148. Ibid., p. 154. Indochina Newsletter (November-December, 1982), p. 12. Oberdorfer, op. cit. Houtart and Rousseau, op. cit., p. 167. See Troung Chinh, To Mobilize and Unite All Anti-U.S. Forces in the Country ond the World, edited and published by Asia Information Group (Berkeley, 1971). Also see Vietnamese Studies (Hanoi), particularly numbers 26 and 31, Glimpses of U.S. Neo-Colonialism (Parts I and II). For a specific analysis ofTet, see South Vietnam: A Month of Unprecedented Offensive and Uprising (Giai Phong Publishing House, March 1968). David Triesman, "Cultural Conflict and Political Advance in Britain," Marxism TodAy (London, May 1978), p. 166. This speech is fully reprinted in Vencnemos: The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara, John Gerassi (ed.), (Simon and Schuster, 1969), pp. 413424. For an explanation of Che's "foco theory," see Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution (Penguin Books, 1968). Tareq Ismael, The Arab Left (Syracuse University Press, 1976), pp. 92-125, 183. Unsuccessful is a mild word for the bloody repression suffered by these movements. The repeated calls for armed insurrection from the TriContinental Conference in Havana (January 1966) and the OLAS

284

19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.


conference in 196 7 brought swift reactions from Latin American governments and the United States. In 196 7, the Organization of American States condemned Cuba and recommended economic sanctions against it. The United States, as sole coordinator and source of military supplies (at that time), had established a Southern Command in Panama. By 1968, special forces who had received anti-guerrilla training in Panama carried out fifty-two operations. In 1966-6 7, they intervened in Guatemala, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and, of course, in Bolivia. See Houtart and Rousseau, op. cit., pp. 206-7. Martin Kenner, Introduction to Fidel Castro Speaks (Grove Press, 1969), p. xvi. Daniel Ellsberg, op. cit.; Los Angeles Times, june 2, 1983, p. 12. Jaime Suchlicki, University Studentund Revolution in Cuba, I 920-I 96 8 (University of Miami Press, 1966). Fidel Castro's first political involvement was at the University of Havana in the late 1940s, when he was active in the Union lnrurreccional Revolucionaria. Vietnam Courier (October 1982), p. 24. Franz Schurmann, P.D. Scott, and R. Zelnik, The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam (Fawcett Publications, 1966), p. 45. C. Wright Mills, "The New Left," in Power, Politics and People, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz (Oxford University Press, 1963), pp.

257-58. 25. Clayborn Carson, In Struggle (Harvard University Press, 1981 ), p. 16. 26.

Edward Shils, "Dreams of Plenitude, Nightmare of Scarcity," in

Students in Revolt, Lipset and Altbach (eds.), (Beacon Press, 1970), p. 5.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

Lipset, ''The Possible Effects of Student Activism on International Politics," ibid., p. 495. R. F. T omasson and E. Allardt, "Scandanavian Students and the Politics of Organized Radicalism," in Lipset and Altbach, op. cit., pp. 96-126. Claude Durand (ed.), Combats ltudiants dans le Monde (Editions du Seuil, 1968). Otto Klineberg, et. al. (eds.), Students, Values and Politics (Free Press, 1979), p. 293. Williamj. Hanna, "Student Protest in Independent Black Africa," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May 1971 ), p. 172. Anthony Eisler, Bombs, Beards and Barricades: JJO Years of Youth in Revolt (Stein and Day, 1971); Edith H. Altbach, "Vanguard of Revolt: Students and Politics in Central Europe, 1815-1848" in Lipset and Altbach, op. cit.;J. Habermas, Toward a Rational Society (Beacon Press, 1972), p. 40. Ernest Mandel as quoted in Tariq Ali, 1968 and After (Blond and Briggs, 1978), pp. 47-49. Alexander Cockburn and Robin Blackburn (eds.), Student Power: Problems, Diagnasis, Action (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 141-62. Kursbuch (Berlin), No. 18, p. 155. Arthur Liebman, "Student Activism in Mexico," The Annals of the

Notes

37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56.

285

Amnktm Academy of Politkal tmd Social Science (May 1971), p. 165; Elena Poniatowska, Frmte es el Silmcio (Ediciones Era, 1980). Heinz Rudolf Sonntag, "Versuch Uber die lateinamerikanischen Universitiiten," Kursbuch 1J (Berlin, june 1968);Jean Meyer, "Le mouvement Etudiant en Amerique latine," Esprit (Paris, May 1969), pp. 740-53. Robert Scott, "Student Political Activism in Latin America," in Lipset and Altbach, op. cit., p. 404. M. Pheline, "Crise universitaire et mouvement etudiant au Bresil," Pntistms, No. 44 (Oct.-Nov. 1968), pp. 93-113. Luisa A. Brignardello, El Movimiento Estudiantil Argenti7JO.~Corritntes ideoJOgicos y opiniones de sus dirigentes (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Macchi, 1972). Tilman Fichter and Siegward Lonnendonker, Kleine Geschkhte des SDS (Rotbuch Verlag, 1977). SDS, Der K1111pf des vittMmesischen Volkes und die Globtdstr~ttgie des Imperialism (Berlin, February 17-18, 1968). F.C. Hunnius, Student Rtwlts: The New Left in West Gtrintmy (War Resisters' International, 1968). Heinz Grossman and Oskar Negt (eds.), Die Aufnstehung dn Gewalt (Europiische Verlagsanstalt, 1968). H.J. Giessler, APO-Rebellion Mai 1968 (Pamphlet- Verlag G. Rosenberger, 1968). The emergence of post-New Left cultural politics in Central Europe at the beginning of the 1980s is empirical evidence of the world-historical nature of the New Left, and an entire chapter of this book was originally written to document the emergence of the Punk Left in Central Europe. That chapter was deleted in order to focus this book on the events of 1968-1970. It appeared in an abbreviated form as "The Extraparliamentary Left in Europe," Monthly Rt11itw (September 1982). Kursbuch JJ (Berlin, 1968), p. 55. Facts on File (1968), pp. 205-6. Barbara and John Ehrenreich, Long Mnch, Short Spring (Monthly Review Press, 1969), p. 60 Valdo Spini, "The New Left in Italy," /rnmul of Contnnporny History Qanuary-April 1972), pp. 65-66. Arrigo Levi, "Italy: The Crisis of Governing" in Foreign Affairs (October 1970), pp. 14 7-60. Donald Katz, "Tribes: Italy's Metropolitan Indians," Rolling Stone (November 17, 1977), pp. 60-65; "Indios Metropolitanos," El Viejo Topo (Madrid, july 1977). Bernhard Schutze, "Wiederstand an Spaniens Universitaten," Kursbuch I J Qune 1968). Manuel T uiion de Lara, "Le probleme universitaire espagnol," Esprit (Paris, May 1969), p. 848. Dnnocracia Popular (Madrid), January 1968. London Times, April 2, 1969.

286

57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.


David Widgery, The Left in Britain, /956-/968 (Penguin Publishers, 1972). Nobua Aruga as quoted in Youth Up In Arms by George PalocziHorvath (David McKay Co., 1971), p. 197. Michiya Shimbori, "Student Radicals in Japan," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May 1971), p. 153. Yoshihiko Hanawa, "Le radicalisme de Ia violence chez les etudianrs japonais," Esprit (Paris, May 1969), pp. 754-63. Jeanne Habel, "Les luttes etudiants et ouvrieres au Japon," Partisans, No. 44 (October-November 1968), pp. 79-92. Quoted in Robert N. Kearney, "Youth Protest in the Politics of Sri Lanka," Sociological Focus (August 1980), p. 304. Samar Sen (ed.), Naxalbari and After (Calcutta, 1978) Sumanta Banerjee, India's Simmering Revolution: The Naxalitt Uprising (Zed Press, 1984). Luis Aguilar (ed.), Marxism inLatinAmerica(Temple University Press, 1978), pp. 152-7. See The Kapetanios: Partisans and Civil War in Greece, I 943-1949 by Dominique Eudes (Monthly Review Press, 1972). Further analysis of the Comintern's sabotage of popular social movements in the 1930s and 1940s can be found in Fernando Claudio, The Communist Movement (Monthly Review Press, 1974). Telos, Number 25. K. Mehnert, Moscow and the New Left (University of California Press, 1975), pp. 117-8. Vladimir Kusin, The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring (Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 63. Ibid., p. 139. Ibid., p. 60. Robin A. Remington (ed.), Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis (MIT Press, 1969), p. 17. "Studenten in Prag," Kursbuch 13 (Berlin, June 1968), pp. 69-70. Remington, op. cit., p. 162. Kusin, op. cit., p. 128. Ibid., pp. 114-15. Serge Mallet, Bureaucracy and Technocracy in the Socialist Countries (Spokesman Books, 1974). Remington, op. cit., pp. 5-7, 195-212. M. Randle and A. Carter, Support Czechoslovakia (Houseman's Press, 1968), p. 10. Remington, op. cit., p. 455; Voices of Czechoslovak Socialists (Merlin Press, 1977), pp. 6-7. Remington, op. cit., p. 4 55. Jirl Pelikan, Sozialistische Opposition in der CSSR (Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1973). Hans-Peter Riese (ed.), Since the Prague Spring.(Vintage Books, 1979). Randle and Carter,op. cit., pp.l4-17; Facts on File (1968), pp. 387,489. Kusin, op.. cit., p. 127.

Notes

287

Ibid., pp. 127, 147-48. M. Markov£c, Student (May 21, 1968). "The Topic is Action," Student (May 14, 1968), p. 4 as quoted in Revolt in Soooist Yugoslilvi4: June 1968 (Black and Red, 1973), p. 7. 89. Susret (May 15, 1968), pp. 7-8. 90. Politika, December 29, 1968. 91. "Warschauer Bilanz," Kursbuth lJ Qune 1968), pp. 91-107. 92. Revolutionary Mflf'xist Students from Poland Speak Out, 19 64-196 8 (Merit Publishers, 1970). 93. Zugmunt Bauman, "Le combat des etudiants polonais," Espirit (May 1969), p. 865. 94. Boston Globe, May 9, 1981; Le Monde, January 28, 1971. 95. Informations Correspondence Ouvrieres, Polilnd, 1970-71: C1pitt~lirm and Clilss Struggle (Black and Red, 1917), pp. 11-12. 96. Ibid., p. 23. 97. Michael Dobbs, K. S. Karol, and Dessa Trevisan, Poland, Solid~rity, Wlles1 (McGraw Hill, 1981). 98. Informations Correspondence Ouvrieres, op. cit., p. 43. 99. Risto Bajalski in Le Monde, January 2, 1971. 100. Der Spiegel, January 23, 1971. 101. Contnnpor~ry Pound (March 1971 ), p. 48. 102. William Hinton, Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghw University (Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 187. 103. Houtart and Rousseau, op. tit., p. 214. 104. Between Misery and Hope: Documents from and about the Church in Latin Americ1 (Maryknoll Documentation Service, 1970), p. 144. 1OS. Speech to the Peasants, August 23, 1968 in u Document11tion C1tholique, No. 1524 (Bonne Press, 1968), col. 1545, as quoted in Houtart and Rousseau, op. cit., p. 215. 106. Houtan and Rousseau, op. tit., p. 214. 107. Between Misery and Hope, op. cit., p. 211. 108. Houtan and Rousseau, op. cit., p. 228. 109. Informations Catholiques lntern1tionlles (Paris: October 15, 1968), p. 17. 110. Houtan and Rousseau, op. cit., p. 243. 111. Ibid., p. 253. 112. Arthur Gish, The New Left md Christi4n Rlditllirm (Erdman's Publishing Co., 1970). For a discussion of Black Power and the church, see James Cone, Bliltk Theology and Bliltk Power (Seabury Press, 1969). 113. Houtan and Rouseau, op. cit., p. 214. 114. Stephen Rousseas, Death of a Democracy: Greece and the Americm Conscience (Grove Press, 196 7). 115. Report of the N1tional Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (United States Government Printing Office, March 1, 1968). 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid., pp. 89, 95-112. 118. Amy Uyematsu, "The Emergence of Yellow Power in America" in Roots: An Asi4n-Americm Reider (UCLA, 1971), pp. 9-14.

86. 87. 88.

288


119. Richard Gartner, Grito! Reies Tijerina and The New Mexico Land Grant War (Harper-Colophon, 1970); Patricia Blarvis, Tijerina and the Land Grants (International Publishers, 1971). 120. See Carlos Muiioz, Quest for Identity and Power: The Chicano Student Struggle (fonhcoming from Verso Books, 1988). 121. Garth Buchanan and Joan Brackett, SuMJey of Campus Incidents (The Urban Institute, 1970), p. 15. 122. Robin Morgan (ed.), Sisterhood is Powerful (Random House, 1970), p. XXV. 123. Redstockings, Feminist Revolution, 1975, p. 21. 124. John Hersey,op. cit., p. C-5;Joe Fagin and Harlan Hahn, Ghetto Riots (Macmillan, 1973), p. 105. 125. Facts on File, 1968, p. 212. 126. Ibid., p. 200. 12 7. Daniel Bell, then professor of sociology at Columbia, as quoted by U.S.

News and World Report. 12 8. See Immanuel Wallerstein and Paul Starr, The University Crisis Reader, Vol. II (Random House, 1971 ), pp. 160-62. 129. Ibid. pp. 162-65. 130. Sara Evans, Personal Politics (Vintage Books, 1980), pp. 200-1. 131. Rights in Conflict (Signet Books, 1968). 132. Hersey, op. cit., p. C-5. 133. Morgan, op. cit., p. 521. 134. Herbert Lottman, The Left Bank (McGraw Hill, 1982). 13 5. Hersey, op. cit. 136. The international nature of the counterculture is graphically displayed in Joseph Berke, (ed.), Counter-Culture(Peter Owen Press, 1969).

Chapter3: The New Left in France _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

Ernest Mandel, "Lessons of May," New Left Review, Number 52, pp. 9-32. Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Red Flag, Black Flag (Ballantine Books, 1968), p. 79. An anthology of documents from the participants in the May events is contained in The French Student Uprising, edited by Alain Schnapp and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (Beacon Press, 1971). Seale and McConville, op. cit., p. 92. Ibid., pp. 177-78. Ibid., pp. 48, 183-8, 231.

Notes

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

IS.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 21. 28. 29.

289

Chris Harman, ..The Crisis of the European Revolutionary Left," lntematifm41 SocWism (Spring 1979), pp. 49-54. Andre Glucksmann, ..Strategy and Revolution in France 1968," New Left Rwitw, No. 52, p. 70. Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: The Left Wing Alternative (McGraw-Hill, 1968), p. 131. Daniel Singer, Prelude to Revolution, (Hill and Wang, 1971), p. 70. See Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-lndustmlized Society: A Vmture in Soda/ Forecasting (Basic Books, 1973), pp. 165-266. Seale and McConville, op. &it., p. 79. Schnapp and Vidal-Naquet, op. cit., p. 12. HerveBourges(ed.), TheFrenchStudentRevolt(HillandWang,l968}, p. 29. Ibid., p. 11. Also see Raymond Boudon, ..Sources of Student Protest in France," in the Antuds of the Americtm Academy of Politic11lllnd SocW Science, Volume395 (May 1971},pp. 141-2. Henotesthatinthewake of May, the findings of a French sociologist bore out Sauvageot's belief: .. When the students were asked what were, in their opinion, the causes of the May-June revolt, they quoted much more often the anxiety which they themselves felt in the face of unemployment." Walter Kreipe, "Studenten in Frankreich: Hintergrund und Potential einer politischen Bewegung," Kursbuch 13 (1968), pp. 156-58. Schnapp and Vidal-Naquet, op. cit., pp. 500-9. Seej. Habermas, Tow~~rd 11 R11tionlll Society (Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 50-81. Schnapp and Vidal-Naquet, op. cit., pp. 437-45. Singer, op. cit., p. 85. Ibid., p. 38. SeeR. Dahrendorf, Class lind CLus Conflict in lndustrilll Society (Stanford University Press,1959),and A. Gouldner, The Future oflntellectUIIIsllnd the Rise of a New Chss (Oxford University Press, 1979). See Andre Gorz, Socilllism 11nd Rewlution (Allen Lane, 1975); Michel Crozier, The World of the Office Worker (University of Chicago, 1971 ), pp. 11-12; .. White Collar Unions: The Case of France," in Adolf Sturmthal, White-CoiiiiT Trade Unions (Urbana, 1966); and Anthony Giddens, The Chss Structure of Advtmced Societies (Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 179-89. Singer, op. cit., p. 80. Alain Touraine, The M11y MO'Uement (Random House, 1971), pp. 39-40. Singer, op. cit., p. 211. See Gorz, op. cit., pp. 9-29. This quote and much of the analysis in this section is from R. Gregoire and F. Perlman, Worker-Student Action Committees (Black and Red, 1969), p. 49. See H. Lefebvre, The Explosion (Monthly Review Press, 1969); and C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford University Press, 1956), especially Chapter 13.

290


30. H. Lefebvre, op. cit, p. 93. 3 I. Schnapp and Vidai-Naquet, op. cit, p. I 72. 32. A. Willener, The Action-/mage of Society: On Cultural Politicization (Pantheon Books, 1970), p. 311. Sylvia Harvey, May '68 and Film Culture (British Film Institute, 1978), p. 14. 34. Willener, op. cit., p. I 94. 35. Rene Lourau in Willener, op. cit., pp. 82-3. 36. Norman Bimbawn, The Crisis of Industrial Society (Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 140. 37. H. Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Beacon Press, 1972). 38. Andrew Feenberg, "Remembering the May Events," Theory and Society, No. 6 (1978), pp. 37-38. 39. Schnapp and Vidai-Naquet, op. cit., p. 438. 40. Ibid., p. 439. 41. See Chapter 2. 42. Cohn-Bendit, op. cit., p. 166. 43. Andr~ Hoyles, "General Strike: Fnnce 1968" (Trade Union Register, 1969), p. 29. (Reprinted by STO, Box 8493, Chicago, IL 60680.) 44. Ibid., p. 27. 45. "Universities in Europe Dnw Elite," San Diego Union (December 25, 1978), p. A-46. 46. Ernest Mandel, "Lessons of May," op. cit. 47. Schnapp and Vidai-Naquet, op. cit., p. 427. 48. V.I. Lenin, Left- Wing Communism (International Publishers, 1940), p. 18. 49. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Beacon Press, 1969), p. 56. 50. Hayles, op. cit., p. 3. 51. A. Belden Fields, "The French Student Revolt of May-June 1968," Students in Rewlt, Lipset and Albach (eds.), (Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 163-64. 52. Charles C. Lemert, French Sociology: Rupture and Renewal Since 1968 (Columbia University Press, 1981); Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution (MIT Press, 1978). 53. Richard Barnet and Ronald Muller, Global Reach (Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 18. 54. "French Polynesia: Trouble in Paradise," San Diego Union, December 25, 1981, pp. A22-23; Liberation (Paris), November 9, 1981. 55. In These Times Qanuary 26, 1977), p. 10. 56. Regis Debray, "A Modest Contribution to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Tenth Anniversary," New Left Rroiew, No. 115, pp. 45-65. 57. Marx, op. tit., p. 122. 58. M. Crozier, Le phlnomene bureaucratique (Editions du Seuil, 1963), pp. 359-61. 59. Los Angeles Times {March 23, 1979), Part VII, p. II. 60. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (eds.), New French Feminisms {Schocken Books, 1981 ). 33.

Notes

291

61. Judith Miller, Theattr md Revolution in Frt111Ce Since 1968 (French Forum Publishers, 1977). 62. Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, "Reflections on the French Upheaval," in Mtmthly Review (September 1968), pp. 6-7. For discussion of Minerrand's administration, see Daniel Singer, "Imagination Has Not Yet Taken Power," The Nation, january 29, 1983, and "Mitterrand's Achievement," Mtmthly Review Qune 1986).

Chapter4: The New Left in the United States _ _ _ _ _ _ __ 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

Repons gathered for the President's Commission on Campus Unrest indicated that there were many more "disruptive" demonstrations in 1969-70 bejfJTe the invasion of Cambodia than in the two previous school years. The proportion more than doubled again for protests after the invasion. Ganh Buchanan and joan Brackett, Su1M114Ty Results of the SUT'IJey jfJT the President's CommissiotJ tm C~~mpus Unrest (Urban Institute, September 1970), pp. 9-10. John Taft, Mayday at Yale: A CtUeStudy in Student Rtulicalism(Westview Press, 1976), p. 87. The RepfJTt of the President's Commissi011 on C11111pus Unrest, William Scranton, Chairman, September 26, 1970, p. 17. Ibid, p. 19 and Urban Research Corporation, On Strike . .• Shut It DO'Wn: A RePfJTt of the First Nt~titm~~.l Student Strike in U.S. HistfJTy (Chicago, 1970), p. 1. Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (Vintage Books, 1974), p. 637. U.S. News md WfJT/d RePfJTt, May 25, 1970, p. 20. "The Guard vs. Disorder," The Nt~titmal GU~Tdmun, Volume 24 (June 1970), p. 2. Richard E. Petersen and John A. Bilorusky, May 1970: The C~~mpus A/ttm~~th of Camb8di4 md Kent Sute (Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1971), p. 127. WtUhingttm StaT, June 24, 1970. Dave Dellinger, Mrwe PO'Wtr Tlum We KMW: The People's Movement TO'W4Td DemOCTtiC'Y (Anchor Press, 1975), p. 136, and Sale, op. cit., p. 637. Dellinger, op. cit., p. 13 7. It was the founeenrh time the District of Columbia's National Guard had been called to riot duty since the 196 7 Pentagon march. "The Guard vs. Disorder," op. cit., p. 9. A year later,duringthe first week in May 1971, the frustrated needs for a militant confrontation in Washington were fulfilled in the attempt by thousands of people to close the ciry of Washington by sitting down in the streets during the early morning rush hour. Nearly 15,000 of the 50,000 demonstrators were arrested in three days of civil disobedience. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., The Student Rwolution: A Globlll Ct111/rtmttJtion (W.W. Norton and Company, 1970), p. 53.

292 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.


Urban Research Corporation, op. cit., p. 12. Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, "War and Crisis," Monthly Review Qune 1970), p. 5. Daniel Yankelovich, The Changing V4/ues on Campus (Simon and Schuster, 1972). Also see Joseph Califano, Jr., op. cit., p. 64. New York Times, January 2, 1971. S. M. Lipset, Rebellion in the University (University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 58. Local movements in San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts, had put the war on the ballot in November 196 7, but less than 40 percent of those voting favored immediate withdrawal. Scranton Commission, op. cit., p. 45. (My emphasis.) Taft, op. cit., p. 161. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., p. 17. Califano, op. cit., pp. 79-80. The Daily Californilm, May 8, 1970. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., p. 140. Ibid., pp. 141-42.

Ibid. Ibid., p. 160. Urban Research Corporation, op. cit., p. 91. The Daily Clliforni4n, May 13, 1970. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., pp. 14-16. Urban Crisis Monitor, Vol. 3, No. 23 Qune 5, 1970), pp. 3-4. Urban Research Corporation, op. cit., p. 50. Ibid., pp. 58-59. Urban Crisis Monitor, March 27, 1970, p. 44. Ibid., p. 18. In Puerto Rico, failure to repon and refusals to be inducted into the military reached 75 percent of those called in June 1970. Repeal the Draft, Vol. 2, No.7 Quly 7, 1970), p. 3 as compared with 50 percent failing to report in Los Angeles and Oakland and a California average of almost 40 percent. Newsweek,June 1, 1970, p. 25, and Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., p. 3. Carlos Munoz, "Toward a Chicano Perspective of Political Analysis," Aztlan (Fall 1970), p. 15. San Diego Street /otm~~~l, February 17, 1971. Stanley Aronowitz, "Trade Unionism and Workers' Control" in Workers' Control, Gerry Hunnius, G. David Garson, and John Case (eds.), (Vintage Books, 1973). Veterans Stars and Stripes for Peace, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. I. Urban Crisis Monitor, March 2 7, 1970, p. 18. U.S. News and World Report, May 25, 1970, p. 20. Cleveland Plain-Deller, May II, 1970. Scranton Commission, op. cit., p. 286. AI Richmond, "Workers against the War," Ramparts, September 1970, p. 32.

Notes

49. SO. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

293

Ntw York Post, May 19, 1970. Urba Crisis Monitor, Vol. 5, No. 11 (March 13, 1970), p. 3. GU4rdiml, May 30, 1970. Richmond, op. cit., pp. 28-29. Ibid., p. 31. Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1970, Pan II, p. 2. GU4rdim, May 30, 1970. VietMm Courier, No. 305 Qanuary 25, 1971), p. 6. Califano, op. tit., p. 88. R. Heine), The Collapse of the Armed Form, in House of Representatives Committee on Internal Security ,ln'Uestigation of Attempts to Sub'Uert the Armed Forces (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972).

59. James R. Hayes, "The Dialectics of Resistance: An Analysis of the Gl Movement," Journal of SocW Issues (November 4, 1975), p. 132. 60. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, History, published by the VV AW national office, 1972. 61. Scanlan's, January 1971, p. 55. 62. Look, June 16, 1970, p. 72. 63. Scalan's, January 1971, p. 58. 64. David Conwright, Soldiers in Re'Uolt (Doubleday, 1975), pp. 44-5. 65. Scanlan's, op. cit., p. 51. 66. J. Hayes, op. cit., p. 132. 67. Washington Post, July 6, 1970. 68. Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (Harper & Row, 1980). 69. Scranton Commission, op. cit., p. 61. 70. Steve Shapiro, "Political Ecology: An Introduction" in Incarnations (Irvine, Califomia),January 15, 1970. This document and the Diggers' 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

papers are contained in the archive of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., pp. 162-63. Scranton Commission, op. cit., p. 69. Urban Research Corporation, op. cit., p. 37. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., pp. 34-35. Ibid., pp. 37. Sharon Howell, Metaphorical Analysis of the Ewlution of the Female Identity, 1961-1982, doctoral dissertation, Wayne State University,

1983. 78. Ntwsweek, May 25, 1970, p. 43. 79. Ntwsweek, June 1, 1970, p. 24. 80. Life, June 5, 1970, p. 28. 81. Ibid., p. 32. 82. Basic data from U.S. Departments of Labor, Commerce, T ranspona83. 84.

tion and Health, Education, and Welfare. Newsweek, May 25, 1970, p. 30. Monthly Rmew, May 18, 1970.

294

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.


Liberated Gwrdian (May 1972), pp. 8-9. Carl Oglesby and Richard Shaull, Containment and Change (Macmillan, 1967). Noam Chomsky, "Watergate: A Skeptical View," New York Review of Books (September 20, 1973 ), pp. 3-8. Counterspy, Winter 1976; Geoffrey Rips, Unamerican Activities (City Lights, 1981 ). Henry Kissinger, A World Restored (Houghton-Mifflin), p. 328. For further analysis of high levels of power in the United States, see Carl Oglesby, The Yankee and CO'Wboy Wars (Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1976); and see Holly Sklar, Trilateralism (South End Press, 1978) for background on the Trilateral Commission. Noam Chomsky and EdwardS. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism and After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979). Vietnam Courier, No. 5 (1982), p. 22. New York Times, May 17, 1970. New York Times Magazine, August 8, 1970. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., p. 85. C. Wright Mills, The PO'Wer Elite (Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 30-31, 283. Michael Crozier, Samuel Huntington, Joji Watanuke, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York University Press, 1975), p. 106.

98. 99.

100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch, "Socialists and the 'New Conservatism,' " Monthly Review Qanuary 1987). SeeJ. Craig Jenkins and Craig Eckert, "Channeling Black Insurgency: Elite Patronage and Professional Social Movements in the Development of the Black Movement,'' American Sociological Review (December 1986), pp. 812-29. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Priorities for Action: Final Report (1973), p. 63. Ibid., p. 53. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., p. 85. Scranton Commission, op. cit., pp. 169-70. Ibid., p. 39; Carnegie Commission, Dissent and Disruption: Proposals for Consideration by the Campuses Oune 1971), pp. 165-66; and john and Susan Erlich, Student PO'Wer, Participation and Revolt (Association Press, 1970), pp. 247-54. Petersen and Bilorusky, op. cit., p. 115. Bill Watson, "Counter-Planning on the Shop Floor," Radical America (May-June 1971). Stanley Weir, USA-The Labor Revolt (New England Free Press, 1969), p. 2 as quoted in John Zerzan, Creation and Its Enemies: The Revolt Against Work (Mutualist Books, 1977), p. 30. As quoted in the San Diego Union, February 17, 1982, p. A-21. San Diego Union, February 5, 1982, p. D-2. Daniel Zwerdling, Workplace Democracy (Harper & Row, 1978); Bruce

Notes

111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

295

Stokes, "Productivity and Production Go Hand in Hand,"' Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1979, Part IV, p. 1. The Crisis of DtmOCT~~ty, op. cit., pp. 113-15. Scranton Commission, op. cit., p. 12. Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, The History of Violence in Amnic11 (Bantam Books, 1969), p. 578. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, Progress Report (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), p. A-ll. National Lawyer's Guild, Countn-Intelligmce: A Docummt111y Look 11t

Americ11's Secret Police ( 1978). 116. See Peter Bohmer, The lm1J11Ct of Public Employment on RII&W lnequlllity: 19f0-1984, doctoral dissertation, Economics Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1985. 117. Richard Barnet and Ronald Mu1ler, Glob11l Re~~th (Simon and Schuster,

1974). 118. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics quoted in Gilda Haas, Plmt Closures: Myths, Relllities tmd Responses (South End Press, 1985), p. 13. 119. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustri41iZIItion of Amerit11 (Basic Books, 1982). 120. Mieke Meurs, "Political Implications of Changing Class Structure/' GU11Tditm (February 4, 1987), p. 7; Boston Globe, December 10, 1986, p. 1. 121. Barnet and MUller, op. cit., p. 230. 122. Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table #886; Robert Heilbroner and James Galbraith, The Economic Problem (Prentice-Hall, 1987), p. 550.

123. Robert Heilbroner, "None of Your Business," New York Rt'llitw of Books (March 20, 1975), p. 6. 124. Bluestone and Harrison, op. cit., pp. 129-133. 125. See Corporate Taxes and the Federal Deficit," by Craig Melden, and "The Need for Tax Reform," by Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, Monthly Rt'Uiew (November 1984). 126. McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara, and Gerard Smith, "Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance," Foreign Aff11irs (Spring 1982), pp. 762-63. 127. Ibid., pp. 765-66. 128. McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara, and Gerard Smith, "The President's Choice: Star Wars or Anns Control," Foreign Affairs (Winter 1984-85), p. 277.

ChapterS: The Political Legacy of The New Left - - - - - 1. 2.

Herbert Marcuse, Countnrevolution tmd Revolt (Beacon Press, 1972), p. 2. Jean-Paul Sartre, BIIUdelllire (New Directions, 1967), pp. 51-52.

296


Stephen Spender, The Year of theYoung Rebels (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 77. 4. William Bollinger, "Revolutionary Strategy in Latin America," Monthly Review (February 1983), p. 28. 5. For funher discussion, see my anicle, "The Extraparliamentary Left in Europe," Monthly Review (September 1982). 6. "Legislators' Inattention Spawns Burgeoning of 'Direct Democracy,'" San Diego Union, December 12, 1982, p. C-1. 7. Chris Harman, "The Crisis of the European Revolutionary Left," International Socialism (Spring 1979), pp. 49-54. 8. Tilman Fichter and Siegward Lonnendonker, Kleine Geschichte des SDS (Rotbuch Verlag, 1977). 9. My calculations are based on data in Fichter's book and in SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale (Vintage Books, 1974). 10. See Seymour Manin Lipset, "Why No Socialism in the United States?" in Sources of Contemporary Radicalism, edited by Seweryn Bailer and Sophia Sluger (Westview Press, 1977). 11. Guardim,July 2, 1980, p. 16; New York Times, January 9, 1984, p. B8; Boston Globe, July 28, 1986. 12. Time, July 12, 1982, p. 20; Working Women, October 1986. 13. In 1912, the Socialist Party received 6 percent of the vote and won a number oflocal elections, and in 1916, Eugene Debs received even more votes while in jail for opposing World War I, butthe Socialist Pany soon sank into political oblivion. 14. Xavier Nicholas, "Questions of the American Revolution: Conversations withJames Boggs" (The Instituteofthe Black World,1976),p. 7. 15. I do not use the word "professional" in contrast to "amateur" but in its similarity to specialized, paid functionary. One of the real faults of the New Left was its amateurism: There were reports of years of unanswered correspondence turning up behind old file cabinets in the SDS national office in Chicago. The current professionalism seems to be the other extreme of what previously was amateurism. See John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, "The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization," (General Learning Press, 1973). 16. See Bruce Andrews, "Criticizing Economic Democracy," Monthly Review (May 1980), pp. 19-25. 17. I will consistently use conservative estimates since I have no intention to appear to be inflating the scope of events in question. At the anti-Haig demonstration, for example, it was estimated by some that at least 80,000 demonstrators were involved, probably a more accurate number than the police estimate of 50,000. German sources include the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Die Tagesuitung. 18. Guardian, April 28, 1982, p. 5 and November 10, 1982, p.7. 19. Radio Speech #2, April 18, 1982. 20. Guardian, February 16, 1983, p. 4. 21. See Paul Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (Monthly 3.

Notes

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

297

Review Press, 1968); Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1972); Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism (McGraw-Hill, 1970). Figures quoted from United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, speech to the UN Special Session on Disarmament, June 7, 1982. See Daniel Ellsberg's Introduction to Protest tmd Sur'Vive (Monthly Review Press, 1982) and Steven Weissman and Herben Krossney, The /shmit Bomb (New York Times Books, 1981 ). This latter book is somewhat inappropriately titled and focused, but nonetheless, it contains documentation of Israel's atomic armaments. James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution tmd Evolution in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1976). Sojourner Truth Organization, Newsletter #2, 1982, p. 37. Village Voice, April20, 1982; Gwrdi4n,June 23, 1982; and Perspectiva MundW, June 14, 1982. See Herben Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Beacon Press, 1969), especially Pan I. Catherine ltzin, Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain Since 1968 (Eyre-Methuen, 1980). U.S. News tmd World Report, January 25, 1982, p. 42. Jim Campen (ed.) Socialist Alte1n4tives for America: A Bibliography (Union of Radical Political Economists, 1974). Michael John, Cooperative Community Guide (Rainbow Nation, 1980) and John Curl, History of Work Cooperation in America (Homeward Press, 1980). Walter-Archeion Moritz, Die Utopie Hat Begonnm (Zero-Verlag, 1979); Paul Freundlich, Chris Collins, and Mikki Wenig (eds.), A Guide to Cooperative Alternatives (Community Publications Cooperative, 1979), p. 83. Curl, op. cit., p. SO; Bay Area Directory of Collectives (New Moon Press, 1980). Curl, op. cit., p. 53. John Case and Rosemary C. R. Taylor, editors, Co-ops, Communes and Collectives: Ezperimmts in SocW Change in the 1960s tmd 1970s (Pantheon Books, 1979), pp. 20, 217. William Ronco, Food Co-ops (Beacon Press, 1974). Akwes4mt Notes is reponed to have over 100,000 readers, and Off Our Backs has a press run of 15,000 per month. Freundlich, et. al., op. cit., pp. 73, 113. Quoted in Alexander Cockburn, "Prisoners of Israel," Viluge Voice, July 13, 1982, p. 8. See Herben Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marzist Aesthetics (Beacon Press, 1978). See Herben Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, op. cit. Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution (William Morrow and Co., 1968), p. 111.

298

42. 43. 44. 45.


Herbert Marcuse, "Marxismus und Feminismus," in Zeit-Messungen (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975), p. 12. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Priorities for Action: Final Report (1973), p. 84. Lipset, "The Possible Effects of Student Activism on International Politics," in Students in Rewlt (Beacon Press, 1970), p. 521. There are important new works which do attempt such an analysis. See Serge Mallet, The New Working Class (Spokesman Books, 1975) and Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises (McGraw Hill, 1974). Although dealing with a different period, Meredith Tax has written an excellent history of The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917 (Monthly Review Press, 1981). For an indication of neoconservatives' fear of the "new class," see Richard Goldstein, "The War for America's Mind," Village Voice Qune 8, 1982), particularly pp.

19-20. 46.

4 7.

48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report (U.S. Government, March 1, 1968), pp. 73-76; Nathan Caplan, "The New Ghetto Man: A Review of Recent Empirical Studies," in Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Winter 1970), pp. 63-64. Harry Braverman, Labor Monopoly and Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1974); Harry Boyte and Frank Ackerman, "Revolution and Democra·cy," Socialist Rewlution 16 Quly 1973), pp. 48-49. Editors' Foreward to The American Revolution by James Boggs (Monthly Review Press, 1968). James Boggs, "Thoughts on the Future,'' Address to the Marrin Luther King Series, Purdue University, April 23, 1975, pp. 4-5. See Andre Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class (South End Press, 1982). Dissent (Summer 1965), p. 328. The Movement, January 1966. See James Boggs, "Citizens, Not Subjects; Individuality, Not Individualism," Lecture at the University of Michigan, December 2, 1975; and James and Grace Boggs, Freddy and Lyman Paine, Conversations in Maine: Exploring Our Nation's Future (South End Press, 1978). See Oscar Negt, "Don't Go by Numbers, Organize According to Interest! Current Questions on Organization," in New German Critique, No. I, pp. 42-51. Marcuse, Counterrevolution tmd Revolt, op.cit., p. 42. Gorz, Socialism 1111d Rewlution (Anchor Books, 1973), p. 30. It is the practice ofthese orthodox parties in the core in 1968, more than any other factor, which has led me to use the term "avant garde" rather than "vanguard" in this discussion. See Green Politics: The Global Promise by Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak (E. P. Dutton, 1984), p. 104. A North American Green who sees the need for the transformation of the existing system is Brian Tokar, The Green Alternative: Creating 1111 Ecological Future (R. Miles, 1987). Quotations are from The Program of the Green Party of West Germany, pp.

Notes

60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

299

7-8. The official English translation is available from Die Griinen, Colmantstrasse 36, 5300 Bonn I, West Germany. The original Rainbow Coalition was organized in Chicago by Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969.1t helped radicalize black street gangs like the Blackstone Rangers and the Black Disciples and united them with groups like the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican revolutionary party which emerged among Latino street gangs. See Lawrence Lader, PfJ'Wef' on the Left (W.W. Norton, 1979), pp. 269-70. Sheila Collins, The Rtrinbow Challenge: The jackson Campaign l1ld the Future of U.S. Politics (Monthly Review Press, 1986), pp. 20, 142, 80, 296. Ibid., p. 247. Ted Glick, "Rainbow Coalition on the Move," NCIPA Newsletter as quoted in Collins, op. cit., p. 237. Collins, op.cit., pp. 328-9. See Karl Marx, Class Struggles in France, 1848-18 50 (International Publishers, 1972), pp. 113-14. Frank lin Lamb (ed. ),lsrul's War in Leb11110n: Eyewitness Chronicles of the Invasion and Occupation (South End Press, 1984). Bruce Franklin, "Debt Peonage: The Highest Form of Imperialism?" Monthly Rwiew (March 1982), pp. 15-31. Gabriel Gard'a Marquez, "The Solitude of Latin America," excerpts from his acceptance speech when receiving the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. L.S. Sta vrianos, "A 10,000 Year Quest for Justice," Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1983, Book Section, p.l. james E. Austin, Nutrition Programs in the Third World (Oegeschlager, Gunn, and Hain Publishers, 1981 ). Joseph Skinner, "Big Mac and the Tropical Forests," Monthly Review (December 1985). Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Possible Effects of Student Activism on International Politics," in Students in Revolt, op. cit., pp. 520-21.

Chapter6: The Rationality of the New Left _ _ _ _ _ _...____ 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

Further discussion of the relationship between theory and practice can be found in J urgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Beacon Press, 19 73), especially pp. 1-41 and 253-282; see also Herbert Marcuse, "The Relevance of Reality," in The Owl of Minerva, ed. by Charles Bontempo and S. jack Odell (McGraw Hill, 1975), pp. 231-244. See Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (Herder and Herder, 1972). ji.irgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Beacon Press, 1975), p. 28. An excellent history of the Frankfurt School can be found in Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination (Little Brown and Co., 1973). S. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale Unversity Press, 1968), pp. 369-71.

300

6.

1. 8. 9. I 0. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.


Immanuel Wallerstein and Paul Starr (eds.), The University Crisis Retldn, 2 Vol. (Random House, 1971). Lipset, Rebellion in the Univmity (University of Chicago Press, 1971 ), p. 17. Lipset (ed.), The Berkeley Student Revolt (Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 3-4. H. Marcuse, An EsstJy on LibertJtion (Beacon Press, 1969), p. x. Seale and McConville, Red FltJg, BltJck FltJg (Ballantine Books, 1968), p. 87. Mandel as quoted in David Smith, Who Rules the Universities? (Monthly Review Press, 1974), p. 225. NtJturwuchs is a German word which does not have an exact English equivalent. The suffix comes from wachsen (to grow), and Naturwuchs refers to processes that have developed spontaneously, without human planning. It is used in contrast to processes that are the result of conscious human will and self-determination. See jiirgen Habermas's Legitim~~tion Crisis for a fuller explanation. Alan Blum, Theorizing (Heineman, 1974). Aristotle, Politics, 1333a: 31-2; The Basic Works of Aristotle, McKeon (ed.), (Random House, 1941 ), p. 1298; also see Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensi0J21JI MtJn (Beacon Press, 1964), p. 130; Blum, op. cit., p. 108. Blum, op. cit., p. 4. Marcuse, One Dimmsi0J21JI Man, op. cit., p. 147; Herbert Marcuse, Negations (Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 88-9. Herbert Marcuse, "Progress and Freud's Theory of Instincts," Five Lectures (Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 28-43. In Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970), paradigms are defined as "some accepted examples of actual scientific practice-examples which include Ia w, theory, application and instrumentation together-( which) provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research" (p. 10). For an indirect critique of Kuhn's notion of paradigms as existing outside history, see Max Horkheimer, CritictJI Theory, op. cit., pp. 195-96. The use of the word "paradigm" may presuppose a parallel structure to natural and social science (a presupposition I do not wish to encourage), but I will use it tentatively for explanatory purposes. Kuhn's notion of paradigms implies that scientific progress is achieved by disregarding prior paradigms rather than by a juxtaposition of the new onto the old. As such, Kuhn's model reflects the ideology of modern "throw-away" consumerism, and its application (particularly in the social sciences) has led to attempts to invalidate theories and experiences of the past rather than to build upon them through critique. See G. W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy (Humanities Press, 1983 ), Vol. I, pp. I 0, 55, 265. Ralf Dahrendorf, Class md CliJss Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959), p. ix. Kenneth Burke, "Dramatism," En&yclopedia of the Social Sciences ( 1968), p. 448.

Notes

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 4 7. 48. 49.

301

See Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Free Press, 1949), especially pp. 164-188. See William Leiss, The DomiMtion of N1ture (Beacon Press, 1974). Max Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 54. jiirgen Habermas, KMWiedge 41ld Human Interests (Beacon Press, 1971 ), pp. 32-3. (My emphasis.) jiirgen Habermas, "On Systematically Distorted Communication," l714uiry, Vol. 13, p. 207. . jiirgen Habermas, "Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence," Inquiry, Vol 13, pp. 360-75. jiirgen Habermas, TO'WIIrd A IUtional Society (Beacon Press, 1972), p. 88. See Habermas, KMWiedge ~nd Hrmum Interests, op. cit., especially pp. 301-317; W. Ten Houten and C. Kaplan, Science 41ld Its Mirror lm~ge (Harper and Row, 1973). Herbert Marcuse, One DimmsUmal Man, op. cit., p. 236. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, op. cit., pp. 7-22. Herbert Marcuse, Eros 41ld Civiliution (Beacon Press, 1974), p. 216. Also see, Herbert Marcuse, "Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man," in Five Lectures, op. cit., p. 56. Herbert Marcuse, Reason ~nd Revolution (Beacon Press, 1960), p. 345. Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, Vol. 4, (Paris, 1908), p. 132. There is still no full English translation of this work. Ibid., Vol. 6, p. 618. I have used the translation injiirgen Habermas, KMWiege 41ld Hrmum Interests, op. cit., p. 77. Ibid., p. 76. Ibid., p. 77. Quoted from Aspects of Sociology, Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (Beacon Press, 1972), p. 4. As defined by Bluntschli's Deutsche Staats-Wortnbuch ( 1859), "society" is a "concept of the Third Estate." G. Hegel, Reason in History (Liberal Arts Press, 1953), p. 68. Marx and Engels, The Holy Family (Progress Publishers, 197 5), p. 110. (Emphasis in the original.) Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (International Publishers, 1970), p. 75. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (International Publishers, 1973), p. 135. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis BOMparte (International Publishers, 1972), p. 15. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, op. cit., p. 112. Rosa Luxemburg, The AccumulationofCapitai(Monthly Review Press, 1968). Marx and Engels, The Gnm~n Ideology (Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 58-59. Lyford Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution (Russell and Russell, 1965), p. 16. Crane Brinton, The AMtomy of Revolution (Vintage Books, 1965), p. 16.


302

50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. · 58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77.

Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Free Press, 1949). Also see "Talcott Parsons and the Phenomenological Tradition in Sociology: An Unresolved Debate," by Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Human Studies, 3 (1980), pp. 311-330. Parsons, op. cit., p. 43. T. Parsons, The Social System (Free Press, 1951), p. 262. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 42-3. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor (Free Press, 1964), p. 13; T. Parsons, "Society," in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. XLV, pp. 225, 231. Herben Blumer, "Collective Behavior," in New Outline of the Principles of Sociology, ed., A.M. Lee (Barnes and Noble, 1951), p. 171. Ibid., p. 181. Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (Basic Books, 1970), pp. 342-343. Ibid., p. 344. T. Parsons and N. Smelser, Economy and Society (Free Press, 1956), p. 312. T. Parsons, Politics and Social Structure (Free Press, 1969), p. xv and p. 395. Ibid., p. 312. Leon Bramson, The Political Context of Sociology (Princeton University Press, 1961 ), p. 58. Actually there was at least one: Jerome Davis, Contemporary Social MO'Vt11lenll (Century, 1930). Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian, Collective Behavior (Prentice Hall, 1957). Gary Marx and James Wood, "Strands of Theory and Research in Collective Behavior," Annual Review of Sociology, 1975. Alvin Gouldner, op. cit., p. 347. N. Smelser, Essays in Sociological Explanation (Prentice Hall, 1968), p. 278. N. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (Free Press, 1962), p. 72. Ibid., p. 73. Ibid., p. 8. Ralph H. Turner, "Collective Behavior," in Handbook of Modern Sociology, R.E.L. Faris (ed.), (Chicago, 1964), pp. 382-455. Mayer N. Zald and Roberta Ash, "Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay, and Change," Social Forces, No. 44. Joseph Gusfield, "The Study of Social Movements," International Encyclopedi4 of the Social Sciences, Vol. 14, ( 1968), p. 44 5. L. Zurcher and R.G. Kirkpatrick, Citizens for Decency (Texas, 1976). Roger Brown, Social Psychology (Free Press, 1965). G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (eds.), Handbook of Socilll Psychology (Addison-Wesley, 1968). R. Evans (ed.), Readings in Collective Behavior (Chicago, 1969). James Wood, Tht Sources of American Student Activism (D.C. Heath, 1Q74).

Notes

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

303

Chalmers Johnson, Rewlutionary Chllnge (Boston, 1966). Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton University Press, 1970). Anthony Oberschall, SocW Conflict and SocW MO'IJements (Prentice Hall, 1973 ); Charles Tilly, From Mobiliution to Revolution (Addison-Wesley, 1978). John D. McCanhy and Mayer N. Zald, "The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization," (General Learning Press, 1973). Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusllde (Illinois, 1966). William Kornhauser, The Politics of MtlSs Society (Free Press, 1959); Theda Skocpol, States tmd SocW Re'Volutiom (Cambridge University Press, 1979). "Mass society" theory differs from world systems theory, but in terms of social revolutions, each theory seems capable only of conceiving of the transfer of power between elites, not of the fundamental transformation of social structures. Skocpol hints at such a possibility at the very end of her book (p. 293), but, in general, her analysis is based on a statist model. Robena Ash Gamer, SoeW MO'IJements in America (Rand McNally, 1977); Eric Hobsbawm, Primiti'Ve Rebels (Manchester, 1959) and Re'Volutiontlries (New American Library, 1973 ); George Rude, Ideology 1111d Popular Protest (Pantheon, 1980). Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (International Publishers, 1975), pp. 428-9. Paul Lazarsfeld, "Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communications Research," Studies in Philosophy 1111d Social Science, Vol. IX, New York, 1941. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological MetluJd (Free Press, 1964), p. 14. The second chapter begins: "The first and most fundamental rule is:

"Consider socilll ftlCts flS things." Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (Mentor Books, 1952), p. 84. (My

emphasis.) See Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, op. cit. For an intense and interesting exchange on Weber, see Otto Stammer (ed.), Mu Weber and Sociology Today (Harper and Row, 1972). For discussion of the modem misinterpretation of Weber, see Herben Gamberg, "Science and Scientism: The State of Sociology," The Americ1111 Sociologist (May 1969), p. liS. 90. Pitrim A. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution (j .P. Lippincott, 1925), p. 11. 91. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd (Viking Press, 1965), p. 3. 92. Mu Weber tmd Sociology Today, op. cit., p. 138. 93. The unity of theory and practice is clear here since Pool's theory must also obliterate the human construction of facticity. Methodologically, the positivistic construction of a fact based on numerical measure relies on the judgement of the human being who assigns the number to reality (the coders). This problematic is resolved by lthiel De Sola Pool through the invention of the "human computer"-that is, by superimposing the qualities of a machine onto the researcher. The inter-

89.

304


changeability of coders is assumed (in much the same way that instruments of mass production use spare parts), and the meaning of the numbers are assumed to be self-evident according to common sense. lthiel De Sola Pool, Trends in Content Analysis (Illinois, 1959). For a further critique, see Aaron Cicourel, Method and Measurement in Sociology (Free Press, 1964). 94. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (Herder and Herder, 1971), p. 91. 95. Ibid., p. 75. 96. Jiirgen Haberrnas, "Technology and Science as 'Ideology'," in Toward a Ration41 Society, op. cit., pp. 81-122. 97. Herbert Marcuse, One DimensUm41 Man, op. cit., p. 156. · 98. Jay W. Forrester, Industrial Dynamics (M.I.T. Press, 1961), p. 5. 99. Ibid., p. 1. 100. Ibid., p. 17. 101. Hartmut Bossel, Salomon Klaczko, and Norbert Muller (eds.), Systems Theory in the Social Sciences (Birkhauser Verlag, 1976), p. 14.1nterestingly, during the 1950s without knowledge of each other, Bellman in the USA and Pontryagin in the USSR each developed versions of dynamic programming which have been important breakthroughs for the development of systems theory. 102. Ibid. 103. Forrester, op. cit., p. 14. I 04. See Hans Peter Dreitzel, "Social Science and the Problem of Rationality: Notes on the Sociology of Technocrats," Politics and Society (Winter 1972), p. 115. 105. Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jfllrgen Randers and William Behrens, The Limits to Growth (Signet, 1972 ), p. 17 5. 106. Ibid., pp. 133, 144, 163. 107. Ibid., pp. 173-4 and 178-9. 108. Ibid., pp. 29, 179. 109. Ibid., pp. 38, 148, 155-156, 159, 191, 195. 110. Ibid., p. 28. (My emphasis.)

Ill. Ibid., p. 55. 112. Ibid., p. 61. That is a conservative and outdated estimate. In 1980alone, 30 million children under the age of 5 died from malnutrition. See L.S. Starvrianos, "A 10,000 Year Quest for Justice," Los Angeles Times (Februrary 27, 1983), p. BR3. 113. Ibid., pp. 50, 183. 114. Ibid., p. 75. 115. Ibid., p. 93. 116. Ibid., p. 192. 117. Examples of such a vision can be found in L. S. Stavrianos's The Promise of the Coming Dark Age (W. H. Freeman and Co., 1967) and Paul and Percival Goodman, Communitas: Ways of Livelihood and Means of Life (Vintage, 1960). 118. T. R. Young, "A Critique of Systems Theory," Colorado State University, 1975.

Notes

305

119. jurgen Habermas, Legitim4tion Crisis, op. cit., p. 123. 120. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological ltn4gi714tion, op. cit., p. 171. 121. Herben Marcuse, "On Science and Phenomenology," in Positivism and Sociology, A. Giddens (ed.), (Heinemann, 1974), p. 237. 122. N. Luhmann, "Komplexitat und Democratie,'' p. 319 in Politische Vierteljahreschrift ( 1968); translation in Habermas, Legititn4tion Crisis, op. cit., pp. 132-42. 12 3. J iirgen Habennas, Knowledge and Human Interests, op. cit., especially pp. 301-317. 124. Jiirgen Habennas, Theory and Practice, op. cit., pp. 12-13. Habennas concerns himself with intersubjectivity in "Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence," Inquiry 13, pp. 360-75 and "On Systematically Distoned Communication," Inquiry 13, pp. 205-18. 125. T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (Seabury, 1973), p. 24. 126. Kant's system was as abstract as Forrester's, as mathematically "elegant," but it was not one in which judgement was "mathematized." In his critique of Kant, Hegel conceived the role of dialectical thought as a way to "strip mathematics of this anificial finery, and to bring out its limitations, and thence show the necessity of another type of knowledge." The Phenomenology of Mind(Colophon Books, 1967),p. 104,as quoted in Rick Nadeau, "Critical Theory and the Critique of Instrumental Reason," (University of California, San Diego, unpublished essay, 1975). 12 7. Herben Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, op. cit., p. 144. Also see jurgen Habennas, "The Analytical Theory of Science and Dialectics," in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (Heinemann, 1976), p. 13 2. 128. Jiirgen Habennas, Legititn4tion Crisis, op. cit., p. 42. 129. H. Lefebvre, Dialectical M11terialism (Grossman Publishers, 1968). 130. Marx, Critique of Politic11l Economy (Charles Kerr, 1904), pp. 10-13. 131. Marx, Grrmdrisse (Vintage Books, 1973), p. 272. 132. Herben Marcuse, Soviet Marzism (Vintage Books, 1961), pp. 122-23. 133. Herben Marcuse, Negations, op. cit., p. 144. 134. Louis Althusser, For Marz (Vintage Books, 1970), p. 34. 135. Ibid., p. 223. 136. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (Monthly Review, 1971), p. 18. 137. Louis Althusser and G. Balibar, Reading Capital (New Left Books, 1972), p. 133. 138. Althusser, For Marz, op. cit., pp. 231-2, my emphasis. 139. Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, op. cit., p. 122.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ENDNOTE Documentation of the material in this book is drawn from both primary and secondary sources in English, Spanish, French, and German. As often as possible, the sources are given in English to provide for further investigation of areas of interest. Although almost all of it is out-of-print, the literature on the New Left is so vast that a comprehensive bibliography would require an entire book. Those who would like to read only one or two other books on the New Left should consider: • Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Beacon Press, 1972). I consider this short book to be the best political analysis of the movement and the most philosophical-and hence, relevant-statement of its future prospects. • Judith Clavir-Albert and Stewart Albert, The Si:rties Papm (Praeger, 1984). More recently published, this anthology consists of well selected documents of the movement. • Sohnya Sayres, Anders Stephanson, Stanley Aronowitl., Frederic jameson, 60s Without Apology (University of Minnesota Press, 1984). This anthology contains a number of insightful essays covering political and cultural questions related to the New Left. • Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protests Against the War in Vietnam 1961-1975' (Henry Holt, 1985). This book is a comprehensive history of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States. • Greg Calvert and Carol Nieman, The New Left: A Disrupted HistOf'y (Random House, 1971 ). Although long out-of-print, this book remains a readable and enjoyable synopsis of the movement's development and interruption. • Clayborn Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1981). Extremely well written, this book offers a balanced discussion of the internal life of the student civil rights movement. 307

308


Among the many books dealing with revolutionary social movements and the prospects for fundamental change in the United States, I would especially recommend~ • James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1976). Finally, there are two carefully crafted and current books on the Rainbow and Green visions for the United States: • Sheila Collins, The Rainbow CJwllmge (Monthly Review Press, 1986). • Brian Tokar, The Green Alternative: Creating an Ecological Future (R. Miles, 1987).

INDEX Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 16 Abzug, Bella, 191 academic freedom, 93 add rain, 211 action committees, 18, 24, 99, 104, 122, 127-9 in Berkeley, 122, 127-9 in Czechoslovakia, 62 Adorno, Th~dor, SO, 194, 228, 249 Afghanistan, 171, 21 5, 231 AFL-CIO, 135, 137-8, 151 African National Congress, 192 Africa, 14-15,40,42,44, 72-3 Akwestrme Notes, 16 Algeria, 14,44,89,216 alienation, 98-9, 112, 178, 222, 234 Ali, Muhammed, 33 Allende, Salvador, 26, 90, 161 alternative institutions, 43, 74, 143, 185; 193-8 alternative media, 139-40,142,143 Althusser, Louis, 251, 253-5 Amsterdam, 20, 42 anarchism, 25, 26, 108 Angola, 14, 35, 72, 157, 166, 212 anti-anti-Semitism, 10, 67, 104 anti-Semitism, 71, 210, 213

anti-war movement (U.S.), 3, 5, 22, 33-4,74,76,117-154,155,206, 215 Arab solidarity with, 35 apanheid, 185, 188 movementagainst, 185, 188 Arabs, 35, 104, 183 New Left, 35, 183 U.S. racism against, 213 Arafat, Vasser, 35 Argentina, 40, 45, 49, 183 Aristotle, 225-6,231,233,241 Army Math Research Center, 144 Aron, Raymond, 5, 6 . an, 100-1, 129, 131, 197, 251, 278-279 aesthetic rationality, 229-30 Ash, Roberta (Garner), 239 Atlantic Alliance, 170 Attica State Prison, 144 Augusta, Georgia, 120, 132-3, 137, 141 Austria, 12-15, 16, 141 authoritarianism, 193, 197-8 avante-garde, 119 political organization of, 177, 204-217 309

310


baby boom, 8, 27, 146, 216,222 to the second power, 2 7, 216 in France, 92 Bay of Pigs, 161 Beaux Arts, 179 Belgium, 15, 40, 43, 44, 189 Belgrade, 3 Bell, Daniel, 5, 78 Benn, Tony, 56 Ben Tre, 32 Berkeley, 3, 37, 42, 57, 62-3, 120, 124, 127, 142-3, 147-8, 163, 186,222 repercussion of Free Speech Movement in Japan, 57 photo, 63 ("Welcome to Prague") Berlin, 3, 12-14,34,51-2,90, 189, 195,208 Birnbaum, Norman, 101 black Americans, 24, 26, 33, 74-5, 124, 131-4, 177-8, 199 black culture, 24 urbanization of, 26 "deconcentration" of, 165 · elected officials, 187 as leaders of American revolution,201 Black Liberation Army (U.S.), 36, 144,205 Black Panther Party, 3, 21-2,36-7, 74, 76-7, 80-1, 118-20, 132, 143, 144, 158, 164, 186, 203, 206, 209, 211 BlackPower,21-2,33, 74-8,82,203 Black United Fronts, 75, 133, 191-2 Bloody Sunday (1905), 15 Blumer, Herbert, 236-7, 239 Boggs, james, 201-2 Bolivia, 34, 36, 45, 74, 144, 183 Bolsheviks, 16, 205-7 Bond, Julian, 33 boredom, 12, 99, 102, 178 Boston University, 137 bourgeoisie, 8, 18, 90 conception of history, 8-9 institutions, 115

middle-class values, 5, 101-2 New Left as, 223 "socialist bourgeoisie," 65 society, 14, 219, 232-4 Brandeis University, 120, 123 Brazil, 36,40,45,49, 72,104,183, 193,215 Bretton Woods, 165 Brewster, Kingman, 118, 126 Brinton, Crane, 234 Brown Berets, 75, 134 Bryan, Williamjennings, 187 Buenos Aires, 3 Bundy, McGeorge, 159, 169-70 Bunker, Ellsworth, 31 bureaucracy, 19, 23-4, 60, 64, 65, 70, 91, 100, 114, 146, 162, 256 Burke, Kenneth, 226-7 Burlington, North Carolina, 124 Califano,Joseph,Jr., 126, 138, 139 Calley, William, 32 Cambodia, 3, 37, 155, 169 U.S. invasion of, 3, 117-20, 124, 131-3, 135, 13 7-8, 139, 151-2, 159 Cambridge (Massachusetts), 42, 118, 130, 154 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Great Britain), 51 Camp David accord, 170 Camus, Albert, 34 Canada, 19,36,43,45,148 capitalism, 26, 56, 95-102, 104, 112, 168, 199 as irrational system, 189-90, 192 flexibility of, 163-4 monopoly, 95, 108, 168, 236 realization problem, 26 Carnegie Commission, 159, 162 Carson, Cia yborn, 40 Carter,Jimmy, 157-8 Cartesian dualism (subject-object), 219-21,229 Castro, Fidel, 3 7 Central America, 9, 165, 185 Central Intelligence Agency, 4 7, 80, 144, 172

Index

operation CHAOS, 80, ISS Central Strike Committee, as evidence ofself-organization of popular movements France, 87, 107 Mexico, 48 Poland, 69 u.s., 121-2 Chavez, cesar, 136 Chavis, Ben, 192 Chemobyl, 231 Chicago,4,34,62, 77,80-1,122-3, 125, 132, 133, 138, 164 Democ~tic National Convention of 1968, 4, 80-2, 203 Chicanos, 24, 75, 81, 132, 133-4, 193,216 children, 23, 134, 194,214-5,246 starvation of, 214-5 Chile, 26, 36, 41, 45, 161, 183 China, 14-15, 16, 43, 45, 70-1, 154-6,179,185,207 May 4 Movement, 16,43 Chirac, Jacques, 115 Chomsky, Noam, 31, 155 civil rights movement, 5, 21, 77, 133,164,200,202,205-6 attacks upon, 164 possibility of future renewal, 216 transformation of, 76-7 "class-for-itself,'' 199-202 Clifford, Clark, 159 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, 104 COINTELPRO, 80, 155, 164-5, 206 collective behavior, 236-9 Colombia, 34, 36, 45, 48-9, 71-2 Columbia University, 4, 78-9, 81, 123 co-management, 53, 111-2, 163, 228,241 Comintem, 16, 17,249,255 Arab Communist Parties, 35 in Greece, 59 in Nicaragua, 58 in Spain, 59 strategy of, 35-7 theory of, 249-56

311

Communist Party (France), 25,8990, 94, 108-110, 112, 115-6, 223, 253 as nationalists, lOS, 116 Communist Party (U.S.), 126, 187 Comte, Auguste, 92, 231-2 Condorcet, M., 232-3 Confederation ginirt~le du trt~vail (CGT), 89, 97, 105-7, 109-10 Congress (U.S.), 122, 125, 126, 153, 155-6, 165, 185-9 called upon to "damage" Reagan, 170 increasing powerlessness of, 165-73,213 consumer society, 17, 24, 26, 94, 98-102,107,146-7,229-30,256 contrllS, 9, 161 co-ops, 43, 74, 143, 193-8 co-optation, 156-7, 161-4, 181, 186-8,190,192,195-7,202-3 international, 190 of Rainbow Coalition, 209-11 Cornell University, 78, 147 "corporate socialism:' 172-3 counterculture, 24, 42-3, 142-50, 159, 193-8 global, 82 Italian, 54 lack of in Germany, 52 counterrevolution, 14, 73-4, 156-7, 161-7, 183,212 coups d'etat, 7, 27, 35, 40, 90 Nixon's attempt, 156 possibility of in U.S., 150 Reagan's rehersal, 158, 256, 257 258 Crisis of Democracy, 160, 164 crisis, social, 10-11, 161-73, 244-5 as adaptive mechanism, 114, 161-73 as revealing nature of society, 117-8 economic, 12, 16, 95, 151 in future, 215-7 legitimation, 144-5, 149-52, 203 realization problem, 26

312


critical theory, 220-21, 228-30, 252-6 Crozier, Michel, 114 Cruse, Harold, 19~ Cuba, 14, 20-21,27,35-7,40,47, 159, 161, 179, 183, 209, 212 V enceremos Brigades, 21, 159 cultural conformity, 19, 197-8 cultural imperialism, 24 cultural poverty, 98-102,215 cultural revolution, 23-5,35-7,423,77,140,142-50,181,193-8 in Arab world, 35 as a global process, 82 Cultural Revolution (China), 57, . 70-1 Czar, 14-16 Czechoslovakia, 24, 25,41, 44,5964,67, 181 Dada, 100-1 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 226-7 Darwin, Charles, 251 Davis, Angela, 144 Debray, Regis, 36, 114 Debs, Eugene, 187 Declaration of Independence (United States), 29 de-industrialization, 165-9 Deir Yassin, 191 democracy, 23-5,62, 67, 69, 70, 230-1 contraction of, 160, 164, 248 European and U.S. forms of, 186-8 extensionof,23-5, 70,182,193 increasing irrelevance of in U.S. 165-73 Democratic Party (U.S.), 4, 80, 125,186-7,190,209-11 depoliticization, 161, 177, 185-93, 195-7 Detroit, 74-5, 138 "dictatorship ofthe proletariat," 18, 23 Diggers, 142, 146 direct actions, 27 limits of, 204

disarmament movement, 169-71, 183-5' 189-92 co-optation of, 190 Disneyland, ban on hippies, 148 divine right, 9, 230 division of labor, 17, 93, 95, 106, 234 dogmatism, 19, 198, 200, 204-6, 243 Double Helix, 17 draft resistance, 122 dual power, 102, 127-8, 181,205 DubCek, Alexander, 60-1 Durkheim, Emile, 236-7, 241 Dutschke, Rudi, 51-2, 78, 180 Duvalier,Jean-Claude, 27,217 Eastern Europe, 19, 29, 59-70 East Village, 42, 142 ecology, 108, 114, 132,208-12, 214.,5, 231,245-7 economic determinism, 23, 197 Ecuador,40,45,48 Edwards, Lyford, 234 Egypt, 14,43 Eisenhower, Dwight, 40, 57, 166 El Salvador, 157, 161, 183,212, 215 empiricism, 229,239-41, 243-4, 250 "end of ideology," 5, 87, 230 Engels, Frederick, 23, 250-2, 255 enrages, 69-70 Environmental Protection Agency, 171-2 epistemology, 240, 249, 250 "epistemological rupture," 254,

255 Equal Rights Amendment, 150, 185, 189, 192-3,209 Eritrea, 35, 212 Eros tznd Civilization, 229 eros effect, 3, 7, 10-11, 27, 33, 35, 42,59,64,71,73, 75,117,120, 123, 134, 139,217,220-1,230, 240 Essay on Liberation, 223 Ethiopia, 40, 44, 157

Index

Evans, Sara, 79 everyday life, 18, 23-4, 42-3, 47, 101, 127-8, 148 existentialism, 24 faculty, 120, 125, 128, 138, 163 Fanon, Frantz, 74 farmers, 26 Federal Bureau oflnvestigation, 31, 76, 79-80, 133, 155, 173, 206 attempts to link Martin Luther King to Communists, 78 Federal Employees for a Democratic Society, 138 feminism, 5, 13, 15, 16, 23, 25, 73, 76-7, 114, 117, 148-50, 179, 185,187,192-4,199,202 co-optation of, 186-93 in Persia, IS in Russia, 16 in U.S., 76-7 radical, 148-9 Ferraro, Geraldine, 187 Feuer, Lewis, 222 Finland, 43 foco theory, 35-7, 58, 183, 205 "forced urbanization" of Vietnam, 160,222,242-3 Ford, Gerald, 151 fqreign Aff.irs, 169-70 Forrester, jay, 244-5 Fort Hood, Texas, 139, 141 fraggings, 140 France, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, IS, 25, 35-6,4~1.51,87-116,118,123,

141,164,180-1,185-7,234,245 Commune of 1871, 7, 10, 14, 102, 104, 11S conquest of Indochina, 14 factory occupations of 1936, 6 industrialization in, 14, 91 May 1968,3,4,5,6, 10, 12,22, 70, 87-117, 118, 130, 216, 219-24, 230, 251 political violence as compared to 164 Popular Front, 16

u.s..

313

revolution of 1789, 6, 7, 11, 101, 230 revolution of 1848, 7, 13-14, 90, 111 Frankfurt School, 24, 50, 22~1. 228-30, 252-6 freedom, 7, 11, 19, 23-6,226,256 changing meaning of, 8, 23 New Left concept of, 24, 226, 230 Nixon's version of, 153 Soviet Marxism and, 253 systems analysis and, 246-7 Fresno State College, 120 Freud, Sigmund, 99, 229 Friedan, Betty, ISO Fuentes, Carlos, 48 functionalism, 234-9 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 135 Galicia, 15 Garvey, Marcus, IS Gaulle, Charles de, 4, 87, 89, 102, Ill, 116, ISO gay liberation movement, 21, 24, 134,148,178,185,203 General Electric Corporation, 122, 137 generalstrikes, 9-10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 126-7,224 called for by women, 150 called for in U.S., 122, 139 in Czechoslovakia, 61 in Mexico, 48 in Pakistan, 56 in Poland, 67-9, 70 in San Francisco, 16 May 1968 in France, 87-116 meaning of, 219-24 pattern of, 93, 126-7 transformation into "active strike," 102, 127-8 student strike in Cuba, 40 student strike in Senegal, 42 student strike in U.S. 1970, 117-173, gentrification, 165

314


Germany, East, 62-3 Germany, West, 3, 4, 15,40-1,44, 49-52, 91, 94, 105, 123, 139, 163, 180-1, 183, 185-7, 189, 193,195,207-212,245 Baden, 13 black-American Gls in, 141 effect on Yugoslavia, 64 New Left in, 49-52 Prussia, 8, 13 Ghana, 43 Glucksmann, Andre, 90 goal-determination of society, 193 221, 224-6, 231, 234-5, 237-8, 240,245-8 Godard,Jean-Luc, 12, 24, 100 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 170 Gorz, Andre, 108, 206-7 Gouldner, Alvin, 23 7 Gramsci, Antonio, 8, 194,240, 254 Great Britain, 15, 16, 25, 51, 56, 91, 94, 123, 139, 166, 183, 194, 214 Great Depression, 135, 151, 173, 190 "Great Man," as theory of history, 21, 221, 233,253 Great Recession (1979), 186 Greece, 26, 40, 44, 56, 59, 74, 183,

232 ancient, 232 betrayal of insurgent movement by Soviet Communists, 59 Greeley, Horace, 187 Greens (Germany), 52, 185, 207-

212 realos vs. fundis, 209 Greenhouse effect, 211, 214 Greenpeace, 114, 191 Grenada, 161 Guatemala, 34-5, 71 guerrilla warfare, 36-7, 144-5, 16 3, 181-2, 189 in Germany, 50-2 Guevara, Che, 24, 34, 36-7,48, 58, 74, 82, 99, 114, 126, 144, 205,

212

Guevarism, 27,36-7,58, 183 Guinea-Bissau, 26-7, 35, 157 Gulf of Tonkin, 30, 137, 153 Gurr, Ted, 239 Gusfield, Joseph, 239 Habermas, Jurgen, 50, 228-9, 243, 248-9 disagreement with Marcuse, 228-30 Habib, Philip, 158 Haig, Alexander, 189 Haight-Ashbury, 42, 81, 142, 196 Haiphong, 154, 180 Hampton, Fred, 76,132,164-5,206 Hapsburgs, 14 Haverford College, 126 Hayden, Tom, 79 Hegel, G.W.F.,3, 4, 8-9,221,229, 230,232-3 hegemonic bloc, 199,202,204,205 Heidegger, Martin, 229 Hendrix,Jimi, 81 Hermosillo (Mexico), 47 Hersey, john, 81-2 hippies, 132, 142-150 Hiroshima, 31 history, 6-13,233-5 Hobbes, Thomas, 235-6 Hobsbawm, Eric, 4, 239 Ho Chi Minh, 34, 81 Hoffman, Abbie, 12 Holland, 183 Holy Alliance, 14, 156 homelessness, 165, 173 powerlessness of mayors to deal with in global system, 168 homophobia, 23, 159, 197 Horkheimer, Max, SO, 219,228,243 Howard University, 76 Huberman, Leo, 20 I Hue, 30,40 human species, 8,82, 215,220,2246, 228-31' 233 New Left conception of, 256 self-formation of, 11, 220, 251 species issues, 17, 213-5 Humphrey, Hubert, 81, 125

Index

flungary, 14, 16,59,61,104 flunter College, 133 flunrington,Samuel, 160,164,222, 242-3 fluston plan, 155 India, 14, 15, 40, 45, 58 Naxalite movement, 58 individual freedom, 5, 7-8, 23-5, 182,202 Indonesia, 40, 157 industrialization, 14, 91, 9S, 224-6, 230-1,244-5 critique of, 142, 228-31 "scientific-technological revolution," 61, 70 Second Industrial Revolution, 14 Third Industrial Revolution, 17, 27,46,91,95,167,201 international starvation, 160, 178, 211,214-5,247 Industrial Workers of the World. 15

internationalism, 3-S, 16,21-2,34, 37,40-2,49,62-4,67, 82,89-90, 102-5, 126-7,211-2,224,230 among students, 40-2, 90 as useful to transnational corporations, 112 see also "nos effect" intuition, 10, 11, 17, 194,229-30, 245 Iran, 27, 35, 50, 157, 169 street in Teheran named forGerman anti-Shah martyr, 50 Iran-Contra affair, 168-73,213 Iraq, 35 Ireland, 19, 44 Irish Republican Army, 36 "iron law of oligarchy," 205 Islamic revolution, 169 Isla Vista, California, 122-3 Israel, 9, 35, 45, 74, 80, 156, 158, 166, 191, 195,213 near use of nuclear weapons by, 191 U.S. Left and, 191-2 Italy, 3, 13, 15, 19,25, 35-6,40-1,

315

44, 105, 123, 141, 181 "Hot Autumn," 54 Jackson, George, 144 Jackson, jesse, 5, 186-7,209-11 Jackson State University, 3, 117, 120, 132-3, 137, 141, 143, 180 Japan, 14, 15,40-1,45,56-7, 126, 163-4, 177 jazz, 24, 60, 100 jefferson, Thomas, 11, 166 jesuits, 12, 72 jim Crow, 8, 177-8 John Carroll University, 123 Johnson,Lyndon,4,31,75,78,81, 245 joplin, Janis, 81 judgement, automation of, 244-7 july 26 Movement (Cuba), 27 Kafka, Franz, 24, 59, 62 Kaiser, 14 Kant, Immanuel, 229, 237 Karameh, 35 Kennan, George, 169-70 Kennedy,John, 154, 171 Kennedy, Robert, 80,82 Kent State University, 3,117, 120, 122, 124, 127, 131, 132, 135-6, 137, 139, 141, 142-3, 147, 1502, 154, 164, 180 Kerr, Clark, 26, 46, 162 Keynes, john M., 168, 238 KGB,47 KheSanh, 30-1,191 Khomeini, R., 35 kibbutzim, 195 Kiesinger, Kurt Georg, 181 Killian, Lewis, 238 King, Martin Luther, 4, 21-2, 24, 33,51,73,74,77,79-80,82,135, 180,206 assassination of, 77-8, 206 growing isolation of, 77 Kirchner, Ernst L., 24 Kissinger, Henry, 73, 156-7, 159 Kolakowski, Leszek, 60, 66 Korea, 15, 30, 35, 40, 44, 82, 154, 185

316


Kornhauser, William, 239 Krushchev, Nikita, 59 Kuwait, 169 Labour Party (Britain), 25, 56 Laird, Melvin, 151 Larzac, 113, 116 Laos, invasion of, 153 bombing of, 155 Lebanon, 158, 171, 191, 212 LeBon, Gustav, 242 Lefebvre, Henri, 6, 99 "Left fascism," 50 legitimation crisis, 5 LeGuin, Ursula, 193 Lenin, Vladimir, 61, 108, 205, 253 Lewis, John, 202 liberty,ll, 17,111-2 Libya, 161 Liddy plan, 155 life instincts, 10, 101-2, 225 Limits to Growth, 245-7 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 5, 41, 124, 216,222-3 Living Theatre, 100, 143 London,34,41-2,51,56 Lordstown, Ohio, 144 Louis XIV, 116 Lukacs, Georg, 59, 194, 252, 255 Luhmann, Niklas, 248 lumpenproletariat, 25~6 Lumumba, Patrice, 49 Luxemburg, Rosa, 9, 11,61 Lynd, Staughton, 202 Machiavelli, Nicolo, 151, 241-2 Magee, Ruchell, 144 Makatini, johnston, 192 Malcolm X, 22, 26, 74,79-80,206 Mandel, Ernest, 46, 223 Mankato State College, 123 Mao Zedong, 36, 57, 70, 126 Maoism, 25, 36 March 22 Movement (France), 22, 27, 52, 90, 101, 104, 206 Marcos, Ferdinand, 27, 217 Marcuse, Herbert, 5, 8, 20-1, 22, 109, 126, 177, 179, 206, 223,

22?-30,243,249,252,253 disagreement with Habermas 228-30 ' popularity in japan, 57 Marighellia, Carlos, 36 Marx, Karl, 90-1,97, 119, 194,221, 233-4, 250-5 Marxism-Leninism, 25, 198 205207 , "weak links," 212 mass media, 3, 27, 88-9, 125, 139, 168, 177,181,209,213 distortion of worker-student relations, 137, 138-9 New Left contestation of 181 . of, 213 ' rac1sm sexism of, 81 workers in, 96 Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, 137, 138 McCarthy, Eugene, 31, 80 McCarthy,Joe, 154-5 McCarthy, john, 239 McCloskey, Paul, 213 McComb County Community College, 148 McGee, Frank, 31 McNamara, Robert, 169-70 Meany, George, 135, 137 Medelli~ Conference (1968), 72 Mettem1ch, Klemens, 14, 1}6-7 Mexico, 3,4,14,40-1, 45,47-9,82, 185,213,215-6 1968 Olympics, 47-9 middle strata, 25-6 militarism, 190, 193, 225 military, revolt in, 80, 117, 124, 139-142, 154 desertions from, 141 Mills, C. Wright, 40, 98, 200 235 248 ' • Minneapolis, 16 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 125 M~ssissippi Valley State Collge, 13 2 M1tterrand, Fran'iois, 113-6, 185 Monthly Review, 115, 124 150 152-3 ' •

Index

Morehead State College, 13 2 Moro, Aldo, 3, 53 Morrison, Jim, 81 Mozambique, 35,72-3, 151,212 My Lai, 32 Namibia, 212 Nanterre University,12,42,Sl, 9091 Napolean (Bonaparte), 14, 112-3 Bonapartism, 91 Napolean III, 26 National Association for the AdvancementofColoredPeople, 151 National Council of Churches, 32 National Front (France), 116 National Guard (U.S.), 74, 77-8, 80, 119-20, 123,124, 125, 131, 135-7, 142, 147,162, 164 National Liberation Front (Vietnam), 30, 34, 135, 141, 148 U.S. soldiers defecting to, 141 National Organization for Women, 77, ISO nationalization, 113-6 limited benefits of (in contrast to socialization), 116 nation-state, obsolescence of, 211-2 Native Americans, 7S-6, 146 Nature, 5, 59, 101-2,178-9, 192, 219-56 becoming History through revolution, 10, 224-6 defined,225,251 ~a~m.10,96, 193,224,239 Nazis, 26, 50, 87-8, 94, 166, 181, 191, 213,215,243 "negative charisma," 156-1 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 15 neo-colonialism, 26 New Left, critique of established social theory, 219-56 defming characteristics of, 23-7 in Arab countries, 35 in Eastern Europe, 64-6, 70 in Latin America, 183 leadership and, 24, 107, 119-20

317

schools of thought, 194 within the Catholic Church, 73 New MobilizationCommittee,122 "new social movements," 21-2 new working class, 12, 17, 18, 46, 95-1, 108-9 New York University, 120 Newton, Huey P., 118, 132, 134, 203,205 Nicaragua, 9, 34, 36, 45, 49, 151, 161,169,171,183,212-3,231 Nigeria, 42 Nixon, Richard, 37, 73, 118-20, 124, 125, 131, 133, 135-8, 1506, 165, 168-9, 195 "enemies list," 125 impeachment of, 126,155-6,165 Northwestern University, 127 nuclear freeze, 189-92 nuclear power, 106, 110, 185, 215, 231 nuclear weapons, 37, 98,159, 16971,191,244,247 proposed use of, 191 Oberlin College, 120 Oberschall, Anthony, 239 office workers, 17, 26 Ohio State University, 124, 125, 133 Old Left, 18-19,22-7,202,207 as integrated into system, 64, 202 revival of, 183 versus New Left, 58-9 one-dimensional society, 230 Orangeburg, South Carolina, 77 Orwell, George, 153, 223 Pakistan, 40, 55-61 Palestine, 9, 185, 195,210,212-3 Palestine Liberation Organization, 35, 156, 161,207 Panama, 35, 40,49 Papandreou, Andreas, 185 Paris, 6, 13-14, 34, 37, 64, 70, 88, 189 peace talks (U.S. and Viemam), 21, 90, 157

318


Parris, Bob (Moses), 202 Parsons, Talcott, 234-8 patriarchy, 5, 17, 23-4, 148-9, 178, 192-3, 199, 201 pax Americana, 29, 73, 164-73 peasantry, 12, 14, 17, 26 proletarianization of, 26 urbanization of in France, 91 Pentagqn Papers, 125 People's Park, 124, 142-3 Percy, Charles, 213 Persia, 15 Peru, 14, 34-6,40,45, 71-2, 183 Philippines, 14, 35 Piercy, Marge, 193 Pike, Douglas, 30 Plastic People, 59 Plato, 221, 226 Poland, 13, 14, 35, 41, 59-60, 64, 66-70 political parties, 14 Pool, lthiel de Sola, 242 Pope, the, 14, 23, 71-3 Paul VI, 72-3 Powell, Adam Claycon, 77 Prague, 4, 13, 15, 34, 37,60-3 Princeton University, 120, 126 prisoners, 13, 119, 131, 134, 141, 144 proletariat, 18, 90, 200-2 metaphysics about, 251-3 "proletarian" aspect of the middle strata, 25 see also working class Protestant ethic, 146, 198 Protestant Reformation, 23 Provos (Holland), 20, 42 psychic Thermidor, 110, 158-9, 180-1, 197-8 public space, contestation of, 17, 18, 27, 102, 123 Pullman Union, 200 Puerto Rico, 40, 75-6, 133, 192 punk left, 183 Quang T ri, 21

racism, 17, 23-4, 74-5, 78, 132-4, 138, 147, 149, 160, 164-5, 178, 193, 197-8,210 of 1980s disarmament movement, 189-92 Rainbow Coalition, 76, 164-5,1856, 188, 208-12 as organized by Fred Hampton, 76, 164-5 rain forests, destruction of, 214-5 RampllTts, sexism of, 148 rationalism, 5, 229-30, 232, 248-9 Reagan, Ronald, 80, 127, 157-8, 168-73,190,209 practices coup d'etat, 158, 257 Red Army Facuon (W. Germany), 36,52 Red Brigades, 36 "red-diaper" babies, 19 5 reforms,46, 75, 111-116, 118, 1604, 165 designed to maintain stability, 118 reformist leadership, 188-93 reggae, 193 religion, 6, 23, 32, 71-73, 232-3, 243,253,255 Buddhists, 30, 40 Marxism as, 253 theology of liberation, 71-3 repressive tolerance, 4 Republic of New Africa, 74 Reserve Officer Training Corps, 78, 119-20,127,133,147,154,163 revolution, 4-6, 10-14,20, 27,46, 74,224-6,227,234-45 called for in U.S., 124, 130 constituency of, 199-204 early studies of, 234-8 genuine, 115, 202 in 1776, 6, 11, 18, 20, 29, 71, 168,215,230 in 1789,6, 7, 11, 101, 230-2 in 1848,6, 10-14,27,220,233 in 1905,6, 10-11,27,46 in 1917,6, 11,212,220,230, 249

Index

New Left conception of, 4-5, 20,

l02 organization for, 204-217 possibility of in U.S., 177-217 possibility of in 1968, Ill versus rebellion, 179-86, 199 see 1lso social movements "revolutionary intercommunalism," 203 Revolutionary Peoples' Constitutional Convention, 22, 134, 203, 265-219 Rockefeller,Nelson,l44,152,156l57 Rockefeller, David, 157, 167 rock 'n' roll, 24, 59, 142, 148, 185 assubversiveofthemilitary, 140 demise of San Francisco music, 196 Rome, 34, 53, 189 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 187 Rude, George, 239 rulingclass(U.S.),l25,150,152-3, 155-B,(powerelite) 160,168-73, 190 Russia, 14-16,66, 141 language affected by New Left, 59 revolution of 1905, 7, 12, 14-6 revolutions of 1917, 11, 16, 29 Saigon, 31 Saint-Simon, Henri, 232 Sandino, Augusto CEsar, 58 Sarulinistu, 161, 207, 211 Sanders, Bernie, 168 San Francisco, 16, 42, 118, 137, 139, 141-2, 154, 196 San Francisco State College, 137 San Jose State College, 13 2 San Quentin State Prison, 144 Santayana,George,29 Santo Domingo, 47 Salazar, Rueben, 133 Sartre,Jean-Paul, 180, 253 Saudi Arabia, 169 Scandinavia, 42 Schmidt, Helmut, 50

319

Scranton, William (as Chair ofScrantonCq,mmission),117, 124,1256, 143-4, 147, 162 Seale, Bobby, 81, 118-9, 126, 131, 141, 148 SEguy, Georges, 89, 105-6 self-management, 5, 17, 22-3, 61, 76,82,95,105-8,224,228,230 as basis of revolutionary organization, 204 collectives, 193-8 in France, 99, 102, 105-8 in Germany (Greens), 208-9 in Italian universities, 53 in U.S., 127-130, ("reconstitution"), 147-8 philosophical basis of, 228 promise of, 179, 224 Smdero Luminoso, 183 Senegal, 3, 14, 42, 49, 193 senior citizens, 185 sexism, 52, 73, 76-7, 148-9, 178, 193, 197-8 of the media, 81 sexuality, 100-1 Shah (Iran), 27, 50, 217 Shultz, George, 136 sit-ins, 16, 27 at Frankfurt Institute, 50 in Italy, 53 in Poland, 67 spread from U.S. to Germany, 50 Situationists, 12, 66, 99 Sixty Minutes, 171 Skocpol, Theda, 5, 239 Smelser, Neil, 237-9 Smith, Adam, 231,235 Smith, Gerard, 169-70 Social Democratic Party (Germany), 25,49-50 social movements, 3-4, 6-14, 18, 27,221-6,231-45 co-optation of, 156-1, 161-4, 181, 186-8 decline of, 158-9 intergenerational, 11-12, 216


320

international connections, 3-4, 37-47,50, 123,130,211-2 of 1968, 29-82 "organic" and "con junctura!," 8 professionalization of, 21, 188193 student movements, 37-58 synchronicity of, 3, 4, 14, 27, 50, 123 world-historical, 4, 6-13, 18 (chan), 21-2,212,224 see also revolution, general strikes socialism,23,25,102,112,178,194 bureaucratic vs.liberatory, 115-6 need to go beyond the most utopian visions of, 178-9 SocialistPany(France),5,108,1136, 183, 185 sociology, 101,220-223, 231-244 humanistic, 225-31,241 "interventionist," 241 scientistic, 225-31, 241 "value free," 241-44 Somban, Werner, 185 Sorel, George, 9· Sorokin, Pitrim, 242 South Africa, 5,14, 72,212 Southeast Junior College, 132 Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 123 Soviet Marxism, 19, 23, 25, 36-7, 58-9, 220-3, 226, 230-1, 244,

249-56 as counterrevolutionary in practice, 58-9 critique of New Left, 110, 223, 230,251 general critique of, 249-56 Soviet Union, 35, 37, 44, 57, 59, 61-2, 114, 156, 167, 169-71, 179,245,2~9

demonstrations against invasion of Czechoslovakia, 64 similarity to U.S., 231, 235, 244-5 soviets, 7, 15-17, 18, 69, 88 mjomans, in Persia (1905), 15

councils in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, 16 in France (May 1968), 88 South Yemen, 35

Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (W. Germany), 36, 41,4952,186,206 Spain, 3, 15, 16, 36,40-1,44,54-5, 183, 185 Basques, 36 (ETA), 55 general strike in Barcelona (1902), 15 Republic, 16 Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, 162, 173 species-being, 9, 224, 233, 251 Spender, Stephen, 181 spontaneity, 19, 24, 27, 99, 102, 107, 119, 182, 196, 207, 216, 226,230 limits of, 108-110, 148-9, 196, 199,204-5,224 Springer, Axel, 51-2 Springer Press, 90 Sri Lanka, 4, 58 Stalinism, 50, 59, 250, 254 Stanford University, 126 State University of New York, 123 St. John's University, 123 St. Louis, Missouri, 15, 131, 136, 137, 142 Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, 22, 26, 74, 186, 2023,206 feminism and, 77 students, 12, 17, 24-26, 3 7-58, 767' 108, 199-200, 222-3 in China, 70-1 in Cuba, 40 in Czechoslovakia, 59-64 in France, 91-3 in Poland, 66-70 in the U.S., 117-34; opinions polled, 124 in Vietnam, 30-1 in Yugoslavia, 64-6 in 1848, 12,43

Index

in 1968, 37-58 lack of discipline, 70-1 numbers of, 46, 55, 57, 91, 1612,200 revival of activism in 1986, 185 unions, 54-5, 59 Students for a Democratic Society, 22,25,36,49-50, 76,118,132, 138,159,186,200,202,206 feminism lind, 77 Summer of Love, 142 Sun Vat-sen, 15 surrealism, I00 "survival of the fittest," 9, 198,224 Sweden, IS Sweezy, Paul, 201 Switzerland, 183 symbolic interactionism, 236-7 Syria, 14 systems analysis, 114, 220-2, 226, 231,238,244-9 tactics, blockades, 12 3 interclass diffusion, 12 4 intergenerational, 16 international diffusion, 50, 123 militant, 120, 122 Taiwan, 40, 154 teach-ins, 27 Teamsters Union, 135-6, 138 technology, 29, 230-1, 232, 243-5 as domination, 243 "New Technology," 229, 231 Temple University, 148, 200-1 Tetoffensive,4,29-35, 71, 77,139 Thailand, 35,40 theology of liberation, 71-3 theory and practice, 27, 204, 219223,226,232,243,249-50 Three Mile Island, 231 Tijerina, Reies, 75 Tilly, Charles, 239 Tito, J. Marshal, 65-6 Tlatelolco, 48 T ocqueville, Alexis de, 6, 12 Tokyo, 3, 41,57 · Torres, Camilo, 71

321

Touraine, Alain, 96 Tower,john, 172 trade unions, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 46, 70, 75,89,163-73,204 black unions in the U.S., 75 limits of, 97-8 in Czechoslovakia, 59, 61-2 in France, 89 in Germany, 52 in Italy, 54 in Poland, 70 in the U.S., 135-9 transnational corporations, 16-7, 90, 105, 112, 156-7, 165-73, 178, 192, 213-5 concentration of wealth by, 16 7 use of single-issue movements, 192 Trilateral Commission, 157-8,160, 164 T rung, Quang, 31 Tshombe, Moise,49 Tuptmltn'Os, 211 Turkey, 15,40,42,44 Turner, Ralph, 238-9 UnionofConcernedScientists, 189 United Nations, 74, 135, 215 United States of America, 14, 15, 40-1, 57, 73-82, 90-1, 96, 117173, 177-217 alternative institutions in, 193-8 as a "banana republic," 16l-73 Civil War, 117, 124, 130 co-optation of socialist movements, 186-8 declining standard ofliving, 166168 in Vietnam, 29-35 May 1970 student strike, 3, 5, 117-173,219-24,230,251 possible revolution in, 177-217 post-New Left movement, 177217 poverty in, 166 revolution of 1776, 6, 11, 18, 20,29, 71,168,215,230 revolution of 1776 turned upside down, 9, 90


322

similarity to Soviet Union, 231,

235,244-5 strikes of 18 77 and 1900-1905, 15, 194 universities, 17, 22, 26-7, 43-4, 46, 65,120,185,216,244 as central to advanced capitalism, 46,93,244 crisis of, 91-3 occupied by military, 47-9, 56, 88, 120 presidents of, 125-6, 132 reform of, 161-3 takeovers of, 27, 53-4, 117-30 147-8 ' University of California, San Diego

122

'

University of California, Santa Barbara, 123 University of Cincinnati, 123 University of Colorado, Boulder 129 ' University of Connecticut, 14 7 University of Denver, 147-8 University of Illinois, 13 7 Un~vers~ty of Maryland, 123, 154 Umverstty of New Mexico, 120 131 ' University of Rochester, 14 7 University of Washington, 123 University of Wisconsin, Madison, 120, 137, 144 Uruguay, 3, 40-1, 45, 49, 183 U.S.S. Pueblo, 35,82 Vaculfk, Ludvfk, 61 vanguard, 17,18,118,200-2,208212 Venezuela, 34,35-6, ,.0, 45, 48,71 Venice (Italy), 13, 53-4 Vienna, 12-14 Vietnam, 4, 8, 9, 20-1, 24-5, 2935, 37, 40, 57, 71, 73, 77-8,88, 90, 118, 127, 132, 135, 139-40, 146,149-57,161,186,207,212, 242-3 Provisional Revolutionary Government of, 21

"Vietnam syndrome," 157, 177 Vietnam Veterans Against the War 139, 159 ' Walker, Alice, 193 Watergate, 5, 74, 125, 154-7, 160, 165,168-9,172,213 achievements of, 169 Washington, George, 31 Washington, Harold, 168 wealth, concentration of, 167 Weather Underground, 36, 122-3, 144,205 Weber, Max, 241-3 Westmoreland, William, 31 154 158 ' ' Wilkins, Roy, 151 Willener, Alfred, 100 Woburn, Massachusetts, 171-2 Wolin, Sheldon, 131 women, 25-6, 69, 76-7, 128, 132, 144,166,178,200 increasingly proletarianized, 200 women's liberation movement 13 15, 16,33-4,76-7,81,108,,131: 158-9, 192-4 autonomous organizations, 21 co-optation of, 192-4 women's culture, 24, 77, 193-8 workerism, 109-10, 160, 251-3 working class, 9-10,12-14, 15, 16, 25-6, 46, 52, 54, 56, 96-7, 130

202,255

'

composition of, 200-1 discipline of, 70-1 glorification of, 251-3 in Czechoslovakia, 59, 61-2 in England, 56 in France, 94-5, 109 in Germany, 52 in Italy, 54 in Pakistan, 56 in Poland, 66-70 in the U.S., 131, 134-139 world system, 12, 15-17, 19-21, 46-7,164-73,224-6,232-4 2457,250 ' as irrational, 214-5,224-6,245-7

Index

changing role of U.S. in, 164-75 core, 5 differences between core and periphery, 19-20, 94, 98-99, 109, 207,247 negation of, in practice, 126-7 periphery, 25-6,214-5 possible transformation/decentralization of, 20, 22-3, 178, 233-4,247 "weak links" and "strong links," 212-3 W.R. Grace Corporation, 171-2 Yale University, 118-9, 126 Yankelovich, Daniel, 124 Yippies, 20 Young, Andrew, 161 Young Lords, 76 Young Turk revolt, 15 Yugoslavia, 59, 61, 64-6 Zald, Mayer, 239 Zenon, Carlos, 192 Zengakuren, 57 Zimbabwe, 72 Zionism, 67, 165, 191 Zurich, 43

323

$20.00

SOCIOLOGY /HISTORY

THE IMAGINATION OF THE NEW LEFT bringstolitethe social movements and events of the 1960s that made it a period of world-historical importance: the Prague Spring; the student movements in Mexico, Japan, Sri Lanka, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Spain; the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and guerrilla movements in Latin America: the Democratic Convention in Chicago; the assassination of Martin Luther King; the near-revolution in France of May 1968; and the May 1970 student strike in the United States. Despite its apparent failure, the New Left represented a global transition to a newly defined cultural and political epoch, and its impact continues to be felt today. George Katsiaficas's work presents an understanding of how we of the New Left used our education as a practice of freedoms: confronting the racist, war-mongering status quo with the objective of creative participatory democracy. As we continue to work toward cooperational humanism, here at home and the world over, this insightful analysis provides a useful backdrop for social activism and the struggle for future democratic human rights. -Bobby Seale former chairman and co-founder, Black Panther Party It is heartening to see how George Katsiaficas, a radical who has neither dropped out nor burned out, and whose scholarly research grew out of his own activism as a student in the late sixties and early seventies, has incorporated in his own vision an enlarged sense of the necessity for "genuine revolution [to be] based on the universal interest of the human species and of all life." -Denise Levertov A persuasive and valuable account, The Imagination of the New Left revealingly reconstructs a history which has been in large part forgotten or misunderstood. Here the New Left is convincingly portrayed for what it was, a profoundly influential world-historical movement. -Stewart Albert and Judith Clavir Albert co-authors of The Sixties Papers This book is a must for those contemplating future struggle for change. It gives a vivid picture of what actually took place as well as an idea of where we fell short so that in the next stage of struggle we can build on strengths and weaknesses and grapple with the even more profound questions that face us as we approach the twenty-first century. -James and Grace Lee Boggs co-authors of Revolution and Evolution In the Twentieth Century

The imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968

The imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968

The New Sociological Imagination

New Left, new right, and the legacy of the Sixties

Left Of The Dial

Left of the Dial

Tricks of the imagination

The Psychology of Imagination

Poems of the Imagination

Pleasures of the Imagination

The Wake of Imagination

A Case of Imagination

A Case of Imagination

Handbook of global analysis

Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left

The Convenient Setting of Global Analysis

Hegemony: The New Shape Of Global Power

New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness

Encyclopedia of Politics. The Left

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of God

The Left Hand of God

The Left Hand of Darkness

Left Hand of the Electron

The Left Hand of Darkness

The New Global History

The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900-1968)

The imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968